JJB’s Ramblings

People make poor choices.  You know, the ones you don’t even realize until it’s too late?   The ones that could be cause for embarrassment if only you were just a bit more in tune with your surroundings and the consequences of your actions? The ones that cause the people that witness it to pray to God that either He strike them blind at that moment or grant them the ability to know better than to emulate the action.  I’m not talking about wearing a brown belt with black shoes.  I’m not talking about raising a pack of wolves to do your evil biding. I’m talking about the gray area in between.

Example 1
Location: Workplace Restroom

This is a touchy area to begin with because frankly, what happens in the restroom stays in the restroom.  It’s like Vegas with less flashy lights.  Anyway, at the end of the workday, it’s not unreasonable to go into a stall and change into your street clothes (for bankers this means change your shoes) before exiting the building and going off to your various social activities.  What is unreasonable is being unprepared.  As I cut through the bathroom to exit to the stairs I witnessed a fellow employee exit the stall in only his boxers to grab something from the sink.  I only saw it for a moment, but that is one moment I want stricken from the record.  The gentleman is no Adonis, he is closer to the Pilsbury doughboy.  He noticed me entering and tried to make it back to the stall before I crossed but unfortunately neither of us was that lucky. The lesson that should be learned is: Plan ahead, or at least put some pants on.

Example 2
Location: Wal-Mart parking lot

I’ve been at Wal-Mart WAY too much for my liking lately.  It’s the only store that’s really close enough for a lunch run to pick up the odds and ends things we’ve needed for the new apartment.  Walking our after my most recent purchase, I was noting (not the 11 millionth time) the ridiculous number of handicap parking spots outside the entrance when a woman caught my eye.  She was getting out of the passenger side of a vehicle and I took notice of her shirt.  She was just a little thing and couldn’t have been more than 18.  I know all the kids these days (did I really just say that) wear the sexy shirts that show their stomachs, but this was a little much.  Why? Because she was approximately 8 months, 3 weeks pregnant.  I know Hallmark says that birth is beautiful but this was just plane gross.  The shirt had bunched up on top of the little bundle of joy and I think that her low-rise pants only exaggerated the atrocity. The lesson that should be learned is: Baby T’s, though associated by name, are NOT proper maternity wear.

Example 3
Location: Winding curves of the VFW parkway

On Sundays we usually have a soccer game down in West Roxbury.  There is no direct route from Cambridge and getting there requires time on the Jamaica Way, the Arbor Way and the VFW Parkway.  These are “sometimes two, sometimes four” lane roads that weaves in, out and around the southwestern suburbs of Boston with rotaries thrown in for good measure.  Blind corners and S-curves can make this a real nerve-wracking drive for out of towners and city folk alike, so concentration is appreciated.  Enter the driver of a dark colored VW.  We were behind her for a little while and made note that she was a little in and out of her lane, though not the biggest traffic violation ever.  Well, that’s until we got closer so see what was going on.  Wearing a pink straw cowboy hat, we noticed that she was on the phone. Duh.  That should have been my first guess.  No hands free blue tooth.  No earpiece, just negotiating the curves with one hand on the wheel and the other on her Motorola.  Eventually she hangs up and we go to pass her (again) this time taking note that she is TOTALLY rocking out in her car.  Now, I can respect this.  We’ve all done it.  The difference is that while rocking out (full head movement, etc) and taking the turns like Earnhart, she is also checking her eyeliner and applying makeup in her visor mirror.  How dumb can you be?  I wanted to get a better look to see if she was driving stick shift too but we though it a better idea to pass her and get out of harms way.  The lesson that should be learned is: don’t be such an idiot in your car and do your makeup at home, not while doing 40mph into a series of turns.

Here is the U-Haul update.  They told me that I would hear from them in 24 hours. HA.  We all know how that probably went down right? Well for those of you without perception for these kinds of things, I didn’t. so I sent them this yesterday:

 “I think that I have been patient with the offending office thus far, but my limits are fast approaching.  I have yet to be contacted by this office, which demonstrates the lack of professionalism exhibited.  I would like to see this escalated and resolved today.  I appreciate your attentiveness to this matter.”I get an email back apologizing again, telling me that they escalated the issue to another guy and gave me his phone number.  I was totally expecting to hear from him yesterday.  I didn’t.  Today was going to be the day that I called them (which is something that I assure you, they didn’t want) but just as I get into the office I get a phone call from someone at U-Haul.  He apologizes and says that he is going to adjust the charges to what I should have been assessed (all that I really wanted anyway) and has made people that should be aware of this…. aware.  I asked him to call the office where I returned the truck to verify that they had no pending charges, etc.  He said he would and then told me he was sending me some u-haul gift certificates (for propane, boxes, etc) that are good for another 2 years.  Of if I want to rent a van, I could use them for that.

Um. I can pretty much guarantee that I am done renting from U-haul.  For the next move I will be more likely to BUILD a truck from scratch before I give them any of my money.

…Get out.

 6:10 this morning I am 73% still asleep.  I roll over beside eRock (who is sound asleep) and all of a sudden I hear “Crack!” I am now 103% awake.

In fact, I already have an idea of what is happening.  When we set the bed up the other day we set these plastic risers under each foot of the frame.  From the outset I was wary about how much they could support, in spite of their prior use at E’s apt before without any issues. The box says 300lbs per riser and knowing that weight disbursement is to be considered, I set them under the corners without worrying about whether we should start looking into the South Bronx Paradise diet.  We even have a support in the middle of the bed, so there should be nothing to fear.  I suppose that the other portion of my concern stemmed from the fact that the “legs” didn’t have “feet”, (kind of like Lieutenant Dan),  there were rollers but I didn’t think they would be too effective, so I left them off. ANYWAY.

I quickly give E a shove and tell her to get out of bed.  Now, I know that this isn’t the nicest way to be woken up, but I didn’t want the bed collapsing with us in it, tempting further damage.  I have seen enough Three Stooges shorts to know that if the bed breaks; we will inevitably crash right through the floor into the basement below. E gives me a scowl and again I ask her to get up and look to see if the riser broke.  She gives me a confused look, takes a peek at the riser and says it looks fine.  Ok. I check the ones on my side…they are ok too.  I know it couldn’t have been the middle one because the mattress would be sagging.  Feeling slightly confused but pacified that the structural integrity of our bed was in tact we get back in bed to catch a few more winks before the alarm goes off.  Starting to doze into that blissful state I drift into a nice comfortable slumber to…crackCRACK.Bam.  There goes the bed.  Fortunately we did not crash through the floor. I am sure that if we did, E would have turned to me, called me a knucklehead and then poked me in the eyes.  

Turns out it did crack…what a pain in the ass.  So now we are looking around for another option that will give us under bed storage.  I would like to suggest large wheels of cheese…. we’ll see how that goes.

You suck.

Sincerely,

Me

Here is the letter that I just sent off to U-Haul regarding my experience with them on Thursday afternoon:

I made a reservation for a 17′ truck back around 5/10 at your Lynnway location in Lynn, MA and was going to be picking the truck up on 5/31 for a one way rental to Cambridge MA.  I received a call on 5-30 confirming the reservation, however when I went in on 5-31, I was told they did not have a truck for me.  The gentleman was searching by day (I could see the screen) and I had to correct him and ask him to look under the 31^st.  He then tried searching by in town rentals, which I again had to advise him to look under one way because I was going to Cambridge.  Finally, he tried looking under my last name and found the reservation, for the correct date, etc, but said that they didn’t hold a truck for me.  He even made a comment about how early I made the reservation, which I explained was to avoid the hassle of not getting my truck on time.  He said that he had a 24’ (or 26’, he never confirmed the size) truck that I could take and he wouldn’t charge me extra because they lost my reservation.  The reason I reserved the 17’ is because the locations from which I was moving are not very accommodating to larger trucks and parking and driving would be very difficult, which they later proved to be.  After trying a number of times to override the price, the service rep decided to just make a new reservation for me for the larger truck.  Again he found out that he couldn’t change the price, and ended up charging me $160.65, much more than I should have been spending on this rental. 

I was at this location for almost one full hour, and during that time I never had the full attention of your representative.  He continually answered the phone, started other reservations while mine was trying to process and continued conversations with other customers that were waiting behind me, on what service they were there for.  I feel that I was overcharged and this location was woefully unprepared to service one customer, let alone 4 or five that came in behind me.  On a final note, I returned the truck to the Cambridge location before my due time.  When I entered, there were no less than 7 people waiting to be helped and only one person working the desk.  I managed to give my keys to him and tell him that I was returning a One-Way rental from Lynn.  It didn’t surprise me to learn that he had no idea that this truck was coming in to his location.

I have used U-Haul in the past, and while most of my experiences have been ok, this was very, very upsetting.  I would like to ask your company to rectify the situation and keep a future customer.

I will be sure to update once I hear from them…