A Life Of We: Stupidity

Showing posts with label Stupidity. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Fake Gingerbread Fake Village

A warning upon the notion of misrepresentation: when you see articles and blurbs on Time Out New York and such about how you simply need to go to Madison Square Park to witness in person the fantastically fun Gingerbread Village to celebrate the wintery holiday season, and even when you click on said articles and blurbs and view the pretty pictures, do not add it to your Must List. Instead, add it to your If I Want To Waste Hours Of My Time List. In fact, simply add it to no lists. Click away, walk away, build your own gingerbread house.

Flashback: Last year, S and I spent a lovely day learning at the New York Hall of Science while also taking a stroll down Gingerbread Lane which is exactly what it said it was: a lot of gingerbread houses built across a wall of the museum.

Flashforward: S and I stood on line for over an hour in the cold during SantaCon to walk through a gingerbread house that was not real gingerbread nor was it a village.

Village: a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area. (Thank you, Bing).

A group. A GROUP of houses. This is one house.

Okay, so it's not a village. But it's a house, right? A gingerbread house.

S was disappointed because it wasn't real gingerbread. Nothing about it was real. Not the ginger, not the bread, and not the icing. I wasn't as let down because I didn't expect it to be real because squirrels and birds would eat it.

I did, however, expect a group of houses because it's supposed to be a village. I thought maybe there would be even cardboard 2-D houses and then one to walk through. Nope, this was it.

We stood on line because we were there already. At least we'd get to delight in whatever they thought the inside of a gingerbread house might hold. As we neared the outside, it was cute. Some decoration was questionable, but for the most part, cute.

Cute

We're adorable, too.

It's that square window in the middle panel that's questionable.

I have a version of this in which I smeared out the guard, but having the guard at the gingerbread house is funny.

One of eight pictures S took of me in various poses.

Cute

We wound around to the front and waited some more. I went to check the other side to see if there was anything special around the house. There was not. However, there was this pretty tree next to us.

And across from us were where the hammocks have been outside of the Flatiron Building for a while. However, the hammocks were down; I'm guessing because of SantaCon.

SantaCon

Please explain.

Hammock holders

Cowboy Santa

No Hammocks Here

Finally, we made it to the front! And then we went inside! And! Then!

You know how when you're a kid, you can take an empty cardboard box and turn it into anything you want? Like in 3rd or 4th grade, or maybe it was 5th, I made a time machine out of a cardboard box that probably once held a refrigerator and we used a real doorknob held on with duct tape (which was a really big deal from me because I didn't know you could just go to a hardware store and buy a doorknob) and on the inside were drawings we made of swans based on a book we'd read and a chair. Maybe S has a better memory of this than I do if she was involved in this project, and I think she was. Anyway, it was a cardboard box we turned into something neat.

Back to the gingerbread house. It was empty. Our cardboard box had more in it than this house. This house had a projector on the ceiling. Instead of furniture made out of gumdrops--even if the gumdrops weren't real!--they had projectors. The guy who pulled back the curtain behind the door to let us in told us that we could stand in front of each projection and move around and the images would move, too.

So that was it? Motion-sensored projections on the walls of a cardboard box?

By now, everyone should know my problem with motion-sensored anything. In general, doors don't open. Just last week, I was at FoodTown. I grabbed a cart and stood in front of the door. It wouldn't open. A woman came up next to me, grabbed a cart, and still, the doors wouldn't open. We both moved back and forth, further away and closer, and they wouldn't open. We expressed our dismay and disbelief until two other women without carts came up behind us and wondered aloud what we were doing. We explained that the doors wouldn't open for us. One of the women walked between us and the doors opened. I exclaimed, You have the magic touch! She didn't answer because, you know, me, so we all shuffled into the store quickly before the doors closed again.

Also, the sensor light on my garage has not been working at all. It comes on when you swing the car really wide across the street to come into the driveway. Other than that, it doesn't detect anything, and I wind up parking in the dark where the raccoons may lie in wait.

So back to the gingerbread. I spent a few minutes slinking back and forth in front of the projections, not getting much of a response, while right behind me, the children were jumping and delighting in cartoonish glee. S was not pleased, either.

The popcorn pops over the stove.

There's a tree that doesn't do anything.

The lollipops whir in a circle.

The snowman comes in and out of frame.

The gingerbread man stands up and then his other friends do, too.

This is mostly what I experienced. Nothing happening.

There's also a fireplace animation that shows photos people have taken and tagged with #holidayheritage. I have no idea what the hell that hashtag has to do with what we were doing.

When we came outside, we took a cute picture without the guard.

And then people were asking if it was fun and if it was worth it and S was like, if you want to waste your afternoon, and I was like, well there are cute interactive animations if you like that kind of thing but the line is too long, and S was like, No don't do it, again.

Then we went to Yamamama to meet up with LH and her sister, and that made it all better. If you plan to go next year to the gingerbread village, you can simply go to Yamamama and look at the lone standing fake gingerbread house from across the street.

To end my day on a fabulous note, I saw this on my way home.

It's a dog in a coat on the train.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Why This Whole Verizon Fios Thing Is A Scam

I have Verizon Fios auto pay. My most recent bill arrived and it was 80 dollars more than usual. Apparently, the contract had expired without them notifying me it was about to expire.

Then came a chain of phone calls, each more interesting than the next because each person told me something different.

I was told, you know, it's right on your bill when the contract expires. To which I responded, I have auto-pay. To which he responded, but you can click the link to get to your bill. To which I responded, I have auto-pay so I don't have to click a link to get to my bill.

What I'm saying here is that they should send a separate email that says, Hey your contract is about to expire--call us now to renew!

Instead, they send you a bill that's 80 bucks more than what you've been paying and expect you to pay it.

Eddie spoke to the first guy who said we have a plan that no one else has. We knew that. We knew eventually we'd have to pay more. Someone messed up our order and gave us a plan that didn't exist about four years ago. However, two years ago, we called to renew the service, and they still offered us incentives. It went up, but not $80. So this guy told us we'd have to pay over $200. No, we didn't want to do that. So then he offered something else, adding HBO and Showtime in but taking out other movie channels that we don't watch. It was still pricey. He told us we could email him directly to take the quote he'd sent.

I sent back a negotiation and asked him or a supervisor to call me back.

Then I called. I got someone different. I told him about the plan the previous guy explained to us. This new guy said the first guy probably wasn't looking at our region because Showtime and HBO come with the our TV bundle and are not extra. Then he gave us options and other prices, offering a $35 incentive (as opposed to our previous $65 discount that no one else in the world had). Okay, that seemed doable, but we needed to do some math.

We'd been looking at HBO Now and Showtime online to see the price difference if we ordered those channels separately, only for the months we'd use them. The cost would have worked out if we opted for a smaller channel package, but then I'd lose some channels I actually watch while keeping channels I've never watched in six years.

I want to be able to pick and choose my channels instead of having bundles and packages. That has to be coming soon, right? Otherwise, no one will have cable and everyone will stream through Netflix and apps.

Anyway, I asked this guy to call me back on Monday if we could keep the price he emailed me. He said that was completely doable.

He didn't call me on Monday, so I called on Tuesday.

The first guy I spoke to said that I hadn't had a contract since 2014 and he couldn't do better than a $25 discount. I told him it didn't make sense because we'd called in 2014 once our contract was up and renewed it. How else were we receiving service in the past two years. He understood my question and didn't have an answer for it. He couldn't really do anything, so he transferred me to customer service. He was a really nice guy, laughing and joking, but he had no authority to do what needed to be done.

The second guy listened to my dilemma. He told me that he couldn't replicate what the guy a few days ago had done. He said that sometimes the offers that are emailed expire. So I said, Then when I asked if the deal would be good on Monday, the other guy should have said No. This guy was like, I can't say one way or the other about that.

I asked for a supervisor. He said that he really didn't have the authority in the system and no one would be able to give me what the offer was because the programming didn't work that way. The choice was gone from the system. I asked for a supervisor. He told me he would transfer me but the software wouldn't allow anyone to do what I was told I could do. I asked for a supervisor, explaining that this exact thing happened two years ago--someone offered us something that didn't exist, put it in writing, and then they had to honor it and someone worked with the system to do it. He put me on hold.

He checked in with me several times because the hold time was really long. He asked if I wanted to hang up and they'd call me. I was like, I'm staying on the line, thanks.

Then I got a supervisor. She went into the system. She saw that someone was supposed to follow up (she suggested the guy might be out sick because the follow up was noted as missed). She found the emails that were sent. She was like, Yes I can do this for you.

She added on a sports package that we'd pay for in addition to the original quote, but then she gave me a five dollar discount for a year that she found in the system. She had me on hold for a long time because she had to figure out how to put it in the computer properly. I gave her two phone numbers. She gave me her name and what office she was in and said she was the only supervisor there with that name, so I could track her down through Customer Service if needed. We hung up.

Five minutes later (bringing this process to well over an hour), she called back, emailed me the deal, stayed on the phone as I clicked through the process, and then we happily ended our phone call.

The cable companies work in the same way all big for-profit companies and financial government organizations do. They make the process tedious, confusing, and frustrating. They send you in circles. They tell you all different things, most of which are wrong. They send you things in writing and then say, nope, that was a mistake. They offer you the world and then you wind up paying for the world and Pluto. They want you to get tired and then in the end accept the raw deal.

But they don't realize that I've got all day to talk on the phone. I'll talk and talk and talk. I'll passively-aggressively ask over and over for the same thing until I get what I want. I'll play the game. I'll jump through the hoops. I mean, come on. I got tenure AND sabbatical. This is totally my bag.

However, maybe if they would make it simpler, they'd have a much better outcome. Happier customers who keep coming back and paying for quality service.

And if that doesn't happen, I have thirty days to switch to Optimum.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Hey, Home Depot! Yeah, It's Me Again.

An open letter to Home Depot as sent through their Contact Us email system on their website after they haven't responded to a previous email sent the same way and also didn't respond to a different email address I was told to use after still not sending me the right replacement part and I've had a half-put-together media console/fireplace in my living room for about a month.

Hi, this is the second time I'm emailing through this site. I never received an answer with my first email, nor did I received an answer when I emailed TeamSocial@homedepot.com as directed by your Twitter account. I have been having problems with my order (W473238940) from March 26 for Home Decorators Rinehart 59 inch Media Console with a fireplace in Medium Brown (Model WSFP59ECHD-1). The product had two broken pieces when it arrived. The bottom piece was cracked, but only superficially on the back, so we dealt with it. The other piece, H, is cracked, broken, and unusable. In putting the unit together, we realized it is much darker than the product photo shows (I have a side-by-side photo if needed). Seeing that we could not send a half-put-together unit back, we decided to deal with that, too.

On 4/11, I spoke to Isaiah who efficiently took down my information, contacted the warehouse, and promised to have a replacement piece sent in 3-5 business days. I double checked that it would be medium brown. He confirmed. I received the piece in 5 business days (7 days total over a weekend). The piece was even darker than the unit I have.

On 4/18, I spoke to a different customer service rep. She put me on hold for a long time as she tried to contact the warehouse. She said no one was answering, but she would place the order for a new part, indicating that someone mixed up the colors. She said she would put a rush on delivery for me, and someone would call me in two days to let me know the order was placed. No one called.

I called on 4/20 and was on hold for 30 minutes without anyone answering, so I hung up.

I called on 4/22 and spoke to Koya, who apologized that no one called, but said my order was put through on 4/18. She said the new part would take 5 - 10 days to arrive. I asked about the rush delivery the previous rep offered. She said that was not in the system, but I should receive the piece by Tuesday 4/26.

It is now 4/27. I do not have the part. I have a partially put-together console in the wrong color in my living room and the top part of it in my bedroom. This is completely unacceptable, and I am incredibly disappointed that no one is helping me.

At this point, I want to simply send it back and get a refund. I would need packing materials and boxes sent to me, and a pick up. I expect that the return will be free of charge after this unprofessional experience. How can I go about doing that? I hope that I receive an answer this time.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Fireplace Dreams Dashed

Fireplaces cause higher home owner's insurance. I never knew this until we got home owner's insurance and they asked if our new home had a fireplace. That makes sense, though. A fireplace offers a higher risk of burning your own house down. However, an electric fireplace does not (well, I suppose there could be an electrical fire, but that's not where I'm going with this).

I got a little obsessed with getting a media stand that includes a fireplace. Our living room tends to get chilly and our tv currently rests on a hope chest that I can't use for storage because, as aforementioned, the television stands on top of it. With one unit, I could have it all.

We found one at the Home Depot, the Home Decorator's Collection. It comes in two colors: medium brown and espresso. The espresso was available. The medium brown was not. I wanted the medium brown. So I put my email on the list that would alert me if it ever came back into stock.

I waited.

A few weeks later, I got an alert. It was in stock. I ordered it on the spot. I jumped for joy.

A little over a week later, I opened the side door to my house to find a huge box standing in front of it. It had tape around it that said Caution: Over 70 Lbs.

"Hon, there's a box outside....um, it's large....."

I texted Eddie to ask for advice--how do I get the very heavy box into the house? I tipped it over and got it stuck on the door saddle so I couldn't push it. His answer: A hammer. The two of us would make a stellar home improvement show. The hammer worked; I was able to use the claw to drag it over the hump. I pushed it into the house. Our fireplace had arrived!

We hemmed and hawed about putting it together. Would we be able to? Our putting-things-together skills are not at the expert level. I've put lots of things together, but nothing that had this many parts. We read the instructions and one step called for wood glue. We don't own wood glue. We got wood glue. Then we found that it comes with wood glue. After finding the glue, we figured we could put it together.

We took out all the pieces, putting them across the living room on blankets and sheets. There was Styrofoam everywhere. Styrofoam sheds. I vacuumed all the pieces. In vacuuming, we found that the bottom piece had a crack in the surface.

There was no way we were going to be able to get that back in the box to send it back. I realized the crack was superficial and in the back. We could live with it. Super!

We went through the rest of the pieces. We found a broken and cracked piece. This was not superficial. It was a piece that attaches the top shelf where the tv sits to the rest of the unit on one side. We would definitely need this piece. BUT we could put the rest together right then and I could call the next day and tell them about the broken piece.

Then I realized something. In pieces, I didn't notice. However, as I started to see it growing as a whole unit, I noticed. The color. This was medium brown? Umm, no. It was not. It was dark brown. It did not match.

Darker than the original picture

Not convinced? How about a side-by-side?

Light on the left. Dark on the right.

Seeing that there was again no way we could get the parts back in the boxes, we continued with my being dismayed. I figured I could stain the bookshelf in the living room to match this dark brown so that we would have only two shades of wood in the room. Ugh.

We put the unit together up to the broken piece. Then we put the top shelf pieces together. So we have the large unit and the back pieces pushed up against one side of the living room in front of a cabinet, and we have the top pieces on the floor in the bedroom. Maybe we should do a home design show instead.

I tweeted the above picture at Home Depot asking if the colors matched. They responded:

@ChristinaMRau Please send order number/contact info and Tweet to TeamSocial@homedepot.com so we can address. -TeamCare
— HD Customer Care (@HomeDepot_Care) April 11, 2016

Figuring they were giving me helpful instructions, I did so immediately. I have yet to hear back from them.

I called the number on the assembly manual the next day. The customer service rep was fantastic. He took all the info--the model number, my contact info, when I'd ordered it, everything else he needed. He called the warehouse for me. He told me it was shipping out that day and that I'd have it in 3 to 5 business days. That meant in 3-5 business days, I'd have my fireplace. Yeay! Back on track.

I asked him if I had to send the broken piece back. No, he said, I could throw it out. I then double-checked--the unit comes in two colors and the color I have (supposedly) is the medium brown. He said that the color coincides with the model number I'd given him. Then to reassure me, he read back the number and the entire name of the product: Rinehart 59 inch Media Console Infrared Electric Fireplace in Medium Brown. Yes, that's it.

The piece arrived in five business days, which meant seven total days because there was the weekend. Happy to hear the FedEx guy at the door, I jumped up, grabbed the box, and tore it open.

If I had a working fireplace, like a real one, I would've thrown the piece directly into the fire because it was the wrong color. Seeing that I don't even have my electric fireplace up and running, I stomped my feet and pouted for a minute instead. Then I went a little nutty, turning on and off lights, opening and closing curtains, wondering if I was simply seeing things. But no, this piece was even darker than the unit I'd put together. It wasn't the medium brown in the original photo online. It wasn't the fake medium brown that matches the unit. It was almost black.

I called the number on the manual again. The service rep asked if I had a case number. No, I wasn't given one. She took my information. I explained that not only was the piece the incorrect color, but the entire unit was incorrect, so I was completely puzzled as to how the warehouse would ever send me the correct color considering their color selection seems to be whatever-seems-close-enough. She said that while she couldn't do anything about the overall color of the unit, she could certainly get me a piece that matches. She then said that she would put a rush on it since I'd been waiting for a while now. I thanked her for that as she went to contact the warehouse.

Five minutes later, she came back on the line to tell me that no one in the warehouse was picking up. It looked like they had sent the wrong color because of the model number.

The first rep I'd spoken to had the right number and even repeated back it was supposed to be medium brown. So this made no sense. I said this to her. She said that someone mixed up the numbers somewhere along the way.

Then she said she'd continue to follow up and that either she or the first rep would call me back by Wednesday to let me know when the piece would arrive.

Today is Thursday. I gave them until five-ish last night to call me. They didn't. I called the number on the manual again. I was on hold for over twenty minutes. Then I hung up.

At this point, I would like for someone from Home Depot/Home Decorators Collection to do one of the following:

A) Come to my house, take the unit apart, pack it up in boxes, and take it away, refunding me my money.

B) Send me boxes to pack it up after I take it apart myself and then pick it up, refunding me my money.

C) Come to my house, take this unit away, and replace it with a full unit with no broken parts in the RIGHT COLOR.

Those are the only options. I'm pretty sure that they will have a different option like, I'll send you the right part by October because who really needs a fireplace this time of year anyway? I'll tell you who, Home Depot. I do. That's right. Me.

Say it with me, everyone: FOR SHAME, HOME DEPOT! FOR SHAME.

Friday, October 9, 2015

So How's Your Semester Going?

Glad you asked. It's not too bad. Dare I say: It's actually pretty good.

The start of the semester slowly progressed as each of the first three weeks of class were only three days each with Labor Day and several Jewish holidays. A nice way to ease into a new session of teaching.

Promotion awaits in the near future, so in addition to teaching, I'm putting together my application binder. The application form is about 27 pages. I then have an additional 150 pages of what I like to call "Proof I Did Stuff." I consider the whole activity an arts and crafts project that involves highlighters, plastic binder sleeves, and stickers. The due date is in February, but since I'll be on sabbatical in the Spring, my due date is December.

I've also been focusing on pushing through a new class about Writing for Digital Media and an online version of Poetry Workshop. Lots of curriculum stuff that I began over the summer is now in high gear.

Speaking of Curriculum, I joined the department Curriculum Committee, so I took on the task of revamping the department's catalog page. Also, during the most recent meeting, I was stung by a yellow jacket. Mid-meeting, I put my hand on my head, felt something funny, went to pull out whatever was in my hair, and BUZZZZZ it was a yellow jacket stinging the heck out of my finger. So I reacted like a normal adult and shouted OW OW OW OW as I jumped up from my seat. With my colleagues stopping midsentence and staring, I explained, I was just stung by a bee; I'll be right back. I hung out at the water fountain down the hall for a while and kept my finger under the cold water until the water started turning brown. Well, that's gross. So I went back to the meeting, and the guy in front of me was like, That was so weird! And I was like, I know!

I spent the rest of the meeting shaking my hand vigorously. My finger turned bright red with bright white lines coursing through the middle, tracing the venom. Then the skin felt really tight as it started to balloon up. When I got back to the office, I rinsed it off more in the bathroom until that water turned brown. So gross. When I came out, SD was at her desk so I explained: 1. The water is brown and has nothing to do with me, and 2. I got stung by a bee.

My finger ached well through the next day. So that was a noontime stinging followed by an afternoon and evening of a lot of pain and then some more pain the next day. Plus, the night of the stinging, I went to Oceanside Library to present How To Write A Basic Essay as part of their programming. The whole carride, I was shaking my hand and sort of laughing in disbelief--how could it hurt so bad?

Anyway, that's probably been the worst part of my semester. I've gotten a little snarky with some of my classes at some times because of their rudeness, but overall, they have been listening and learning and participating and being nice people. Like, the other day in Comp, I taught a grammar lesson, and they participated, and the next time I saw them, I reviewed the lesson, and they, like, knew the answers. I can't remember the last time that happened. They weren't all sleeping or staring off into space. They were being studious, and it's been refreshing.

Also refreshing is the amount of work I'm getting done on campus. I'm still bringing home the huge paper stacks, of course, for marathon grading sessions. However, the small assignments that I usually bring home too have not found their way into my bag. Nope, I'm doing all my grading at work. I have mandatory built-in grading time now.

That's not really true. What I have now are Seminar Hours during which I mold young minds. Those young minds have yet to show up, so I spend the time grading. I'm getting so much done!

You see, the English Department has had an agreement that full-time professors teach four courses as opposed to the five that other full-timers in other departments teach. This four-course load is due to our teaching composition and having an abundance of grading every week. In exchange, we were told hold normal office hours every week like all full-timers, but we also hold floating conference hours to meet with students throughout the week, not at a set time. This schedule worked well for me. I was able to make appointments throughout the week with my own students who could not make it to office hours. Every week, I met with at least two students off-hours during these floating times.

With a new contract this year clarifying what these hours should really entail, the powers that be came up with this plan:

1. We were to hold seminar hours during set blocks of time. No more floating.
2. We could not meet with our own students.
3. We could mentor developmental students, mentor non-developmental students, mentor a specific cohort of students (like online or creative writing--though the creative writing cohort was nixed because apparently they don't need mentors), tutor in the writing center, work with LINCC (the program for English language learners), or advise in the advisement center. Only any mentee or advisee could not be our own student.

So this semester, I've held my Seminar Hours twice a week and I look at my Seminar Hour schedule daily and usually, the schedule is gray, which indicates I have no one to mentor at all. Once it was a light blue, indicating that I had someone scheduled. I turned that into a dark red when that student did not show up.

Instead of being able to offer a slew of possible appointment times as I have in the past, I can offer like one half-hour of free time as a possible appointment time for my own students. So they either have to make it to office hours when they might not be able to because they have class or are not on campus, or they have to find my one half-hour of free time available in their own schedule. They can't come during Seminar Hours when I sit by myself with no mentees because that's just not allowed.

Ideally, I'd like to not mentor anyone. I'd like to have simply extra office hours. If we can't be trusted to hold floating conference hours, then I want to have double office hours, and I want to be able to help my own students. Since our classes have increased in size, having time to meet more students one-on-one would help immensely since more of them can get lost in these bigger classes.

But for now, I spend my time in the office grading, working on curriculum, working on my promotion app, reading submissions for The Nassau Review (I'm still the editor), finishing up committee work for four other committees I'm on, NOT holding my former floating conference hours and NOT helping my own students. I go to teach my four classes. I hold my regular office hours during which my own students who are available at those times stream in and out regularly.

I'm looking forward to sabbatical. Even though this semester has been pleasant, I need a break from the illogical ways of thinking.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

My Poor Car

My car is small like me. Also like me is its ability to take a punch. Okay, I don't know if I could take a punch, so this punch is metaphorical. It's a strong little bugger. I know this because yesterday when I came out of teaching my dynamic yoga class, all relaxed and joyful, I walked down the street where my car was parked and saw from a distance what looked like paint scraped across the front fender.

Yep, someone had sideswiped my car pretty hard. I took pictures immediately of my car and then looked around all kinds of helplessly, wondering what I could do. I mean, it was parked. There was no note.

Seriously

My car is bleeding.

Then I realized that the car parked in front of mine was red. And the paint on my car was red. Walking around to the passenger side of this red car, I saw my white paint all across the rear door and fender.

Persons in this picture are taller than they appear.

Nice face

This driver clearly did not know they sideswiped my car because when you do such a thing and you don't leave a note, you drive away as to not be caught. This person did not drive away. Instead, they crammed the red car into a space in which it did not fit behind another car and in front of a driveway. I was on the other side of the driveway with about three feet of wiggle room in front of me. This person, clearly, should not be driving. Or parking.

I called Eddie because that's what you do. He told me to call 911. I was like, It's not an emergency. He was like, Call anyway and apologize that it's not an emergency. I called 411 instead and they connected me to the local precinct directly.

As I started to explain the situation, the man on the other end of the line stopped me and asked, Do you think this is the police? I responded, Yes because 411 connected me to you. He said, I'm not the police and I've been getting these calls. I said, Apologies to you and you should get in contact with 411.

So I called 911. They took my info and soon enough, a squad car pulled up. I explained to the police officer what happened and then asked hopefully, Can you do anything?

He said that it was difficult to file a report when both cars were parked but he did some police investigative magic to see if the car belonged to anyone who lived on the street. No luck. He took my info, though, and filled out some paperwork. He told me he used to be in insurance and explained what would probably happen.

He took another look at how the car was parked and said, I'm also issuing a ticket for blocking a driveway. The car's rear bumper was hanging over the driveway. See? The space was totally too small. He offered, It was probably someone in a rush for the train.

I responded, But this is two hour parking! If you come back, you can issue a parking ticket, too.

I was joking. Not really. I was steamed.

Then he took a moment and said, You're lucky she didn't drive away (he'd ascertained the name of the owner).

I said, All she had to do was leave a note. But I guess you can't leave a note when you don't know you hit a car.

He handed me my stuff and said the report would read that her car clearly hit mine and he could attest to it. I thanked him and drove away. He backed up his car to where I had been parked and began to write her ticket.

Namaste

Tuesday, June 23, 2015