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One of my major pet peeves is when people don’t do what they say they are going to do. I find it frustrating when, for whatever reason or lame excuse they come up with, they decide that what they said in the first place no longer applies. If you aren’t going to do what you say you are going to do, don’t say anything at all.
With an individual person you can usually just cut your losses by not dealing with them anymore, especially if they do it to you more than once. If my personal history is any gauge, if they do it to you once, despite what they may say, they will break their word again. So do yourself a favor and cut down on the frustration factor, dump them after the first time, and save yourself the certain future grief.
That may sound a bit harsh, especially when you may consider the person a friend. I know, friends are hard to come by and you want to hold on to any that you my have, but how good of a friend could they be if they break their word to you? I have neither the time nor the patience for anyone that I can’t trust at their word. As the mantra goes, “I don’t care what you do as long as you do what you say you are going to”.
People are one thing, companies are another. Especially when the company has a monopoly on the service that you need. Places like Edison and The Gas Company are part of these types of evil empires, untouchable by us mere mortals when something goes wrong.
When we had the big heat wave this summer and then got electric bills that were the equivalent of two car payments or in some cases two mortgage payments, we were outraged. We might have been mad, but what were we going to do about it?
We could call the mighty giant and complain, but only someone who is delusional would actually think that this would achieve anything. They covered their butts about the price hike leading up to this raping of the public. They had been “warning” us for a year via the media and communications sent through the mail. So when the time came to let us have it, we had no option but to pay up.
If you have ever had a problem with Edisonstein that was their fault, like a power surge caused by them that damaged your property, you know how aggravating dealing with them can be. Even when they are the ones who need to pony up the bucks, it is an exercise in irritation trying to get them to do anything.
Edison is not alone in the way that they make anything you want them to do difficult, not by a long shot. Any company who is the only game in town are all peaches and cream when they want you to pay your bill, but try to do anything outside of the box and the “happy to hear” from you demeanor flies right out the window.
We all might expect this and prepare ourselves to do battle when faced with the unpleasantness that is dealing with most large monopolies. While I always hope for the best when faced with the task of talking to these entities, I have to admit, from the second I dial the phone my defensive armor is on. Knowing that I am not alone in this mindset is mildly comforting because I know that I am not the only one who has had the same problem.
It is different when your problem is isolated and you feel like you are getting even less respect. This was the case just recently when I was dealing with our local trash company or am I supposed to refer to them as sanitary engineers? After this last episode I have a few other names I would like to call them, but we will stick with the family friendly garbage man.
I’m sure that most of you never have a problem when it comes to your trash service. You put out your cans on your designated pick up day and take them in when they are empty. That is how it is supposed to work and it does for almost everybody I’ve talked to. Granted, all of those people live on normal streets. I unfortunately do not.
Nope. I live on a cul-de-sac, or as the garbage men seem to view it, a street that is easy to forget, which they do with great regularity. This has happened multiple times this year alone and every time it does we begin a little phone dance.
The difference with my trash company as opposed to say Edison is that they try to act like they care. They apologize and tell you what you want to hear, which I have discovered over time gives you a false sense of security. You hang up thinking the problem is solved only to find out later, after their offices are closed, that it was not.
So here is how it played out in this last little go around. On Friday, my normal pick up day, after 6 o’clock when I got home, I noticed my trash had not been picked up. Sigh. So I strapped on my armor and placed the call and made my way through the prompts on their voice mail system. On my way to my final destination one of the prompts suggested I go on line to report my problem.
Considering that leaving voice messages or even talking to a live human being didn’t work in the past, I thought what the hell, I will cover all the bases. So after I left my voice message off to the Internet I went. I left my email and the waiting began.
During the overnight wait is when I really began to dwell on the fact that I shouldn’t have to be thinking about my trash. I made the commitment to them to pay them and in turn they made the commitment to pick up my trash. I kept my word, why does it seem so difficult for them to keep theirs? If they can’t hold up their end of the bargain then maybe their monopoly should come to an end when their contract with the city comes up for renewal. Too bad we don’t have that kind of leverage with Edison.
Saturday morning came with a call from trashland with the usual apologizes and promises of a speedy pick up. Yeah I’ve heard that one before, I’ll believe it when I see it. At least they get points for returning my phone call and email. But when it got close to noon, the witching hour on Saturdays in trashland, I began to worry.
So trying to be proactive and not wanting to see the every growing trash pile get any bigger, I call again. I get yet another person who tells me that they are still out doing pick-ups and that mine would be picked up for sure. At 6 o’clock that night it was pretty clear I had been lied to again, twice in one day. I shot off what you could basically call an FYI phone call and email to the trash heads, knowing that nothing was going to happen that weekend, and gave up.
On Monday, as if it mattered, I picked up a message asking me if my trash had been picked up. At this point it didn’t really matter, my next pick up day was Tuesday, but I guess they wanted to continue this little charade to the end. You know the “you are our valuable customer” charade. Always being one to return my phone calls I called them back.
So here I am, Monday morning, talking to the third person in as many days, and when she told me that she would for sure have the trash picked up, I just laughed and asked what the point would be considering my next scheduled trash day was tomorrow. She said that it would be picked up today and I would also have my regular pick up on Tuesday. I said that I doubted I would have anything for them to pick up Tuesday and she sternly told me that this was going to be the way it would work. Whatever.
Too bad they didn’t have a similar resolve on Friday.
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