Clouds obscured Pike's Peak this morning
As faithful readers will no doubt recall, yesterday's entry left me taping The French Connection for my boss to see when she got back into town. Halfway through the movie the cable company decided to run an Emergency Broadcast System test. That was probably a harbinger of the day to come.Everything started well enough, with me selling about 90 bucks worth of CDs between the office and Independent Records, although I had to trade three of that away for Girl Scout cookies I had promised to buy from one of my customers.
Then I got called out of a meeting to resolve a crisis for a stranded tourist.
Things started going haywire in the afternoon.
I received a coupon for a $10 rebate on any purchase made on one of my credit cards. So I called the service hotline for that card to see what my available credit was. I was informed that they hadn't received any payment since my last statement, and that as a result I was hit with both late charges and overlimit fees. Alarmed, I flipped through my check register and verified that I had mailed them a check on the 2nd; then went downstairs and consulted with my bank, who told me that check had cleared on the 5th. I called and spoke with representatives of Chase, who told me that the payment resolutions office was backed up with calls and the best they could do was have an agent call me back sometime in the next 24 hours. Great.
The body shop called and said my car would be ready to pick up in an hour. So I drove the rental car back to the little Hertz office behind Phil Long Ford. As was typical, the agent was nowhere to be seen. I called the number posted on the door and they told me he should be there in a minute or two. I stood in the cold for about ten minutes then called again, and was told he was washing a car and would get there when he got there. (Why not just tell me that in the first place and save me a couple of cel phone minutes?)
As I closed out the contract I learned that even though my insurance company ended up being billed directly for the rental, I was still being billed $130 for the liability waiver.
I got to the shop and found I'd have to pay the $1000 deductible, as I feared. They were able to put the whole amount on my American Express, which at least gives me a month or so to keep breathing.
Then I went to see my car, and was so awestruck by how shiny and new they left it looking that I stopped and took a bunch of pictures, which, of course, my cheap camera forgot about by the time I got it home.
At about that time I realized I didn't have my cel phone on me. Panicked, I called the rental office, then had to wait for the driver to call back and let me know he didn't see it anywhere in the courtesy van. By then I had checked the curb and found it had in fact fallen off me as I stepped out of the van.
Finally I got back to the office and saw an e-mail waiting from our new CEO telling us we'd all received bonuses on the 20th. My anniversary-of-hire date!
All in all a roller-coaster day.
