Gremlins and repeat calls.

Things have been breaking left right and centre around me over the past week, and while it started off as a fun oddity I’m getting a little bit tired and paranoid. The phones and computers at work died upon my arrival for two days in a row, on the third day within twenty minutes of starting myshift the mouse in my hand more or less disintegrated and the padding in the armrest of my chair fell off. My lovely Galaxy S2 started playing up, and only got worse once I’d called up my carrier and been told to upgrade the firmware, so now not only does it keep thinking it’s constantly charging, but it brings up an error message every couple of minutes and the battery is a fraction what it should be. My computer got a BSoD for the first time ever (though that may be down to drivers not installing correctly) and my car has a slightly more desperate sound to it on the motorway than it did a few days ago. There’s a gremlin following me about, trying to shove me back into the dark ages.

The phone has been the main thing though, I’ve rather come to rely on my fix of mobile internet. I got thinking about it, is it a sign of addiction and a modern malaise? Or is it, in a roundabout way, a nice symbol a humanity’s insatiable curiosity and inherent sociability, a need to know what’s going on in the wider world and be connected to all those we know? More than likely I just want to look at funny pictures on my lunch break. Right now I have to confess my phone isn’t particularly essential as I’m going through one of those anti-social patches where I haven’t been in contact with anyone for a while, my 5000 texts and 500 minutes going largely unused. I’m going to have to start socialising a bit just to justify my mobile contract!

Still been feeling quite shit since my last post, bored out of my mind and thinking far too much. I sat in work today, getting the third call of the day from this old man that owed more than £1,400 on his account as he kept on phoning premium rate numbers. He’d called more than forty times yesterday, and began again at eight this morning and just didn’t let up. His phone was cut off so he wanted to be transferred through to his car insurance then his bank, and through it all I was trying to convince myself that this was an entirely sane but just utterly fucking determined old cunt who wouldn’t take no for an answer and was going to use us as a switchboard even if his phone was cut off, but I couldn’t completely beleive it. For all he seemed lucid, it seemed like that was a confused elderly guy with no-one that was there to catch onto this in time. The notes on his account mentioned a daughter, and I was on the verge of asking him for her number to try and get this sorted out. Overstepping the mark by a mile it no doubt would have been, but ten straight hours this poor fucker had been calling us up and getting nowhere, I pictured him sitting in a pokey tower block forgetting what year it was. In the end though I just got the number for his bank and transferred him through, if nothing else he deserved it for sheer determination.

It got me thinking about the future though, what lies in store, how you only live once, all that bollocks. Made me shit myself looking forward, depressed looking back, and angry looking at here and now. I’m not going to pretend I had an epiphany, it just gave me a lot of nervous energy and made me unable to focus on anything in particular. But hey, least I don’t owe more than a grand to anyone!

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Delhi dumping, nostril digging, and suiting up.

Found myself on a bit of a downer over the past week or so, usual angsty bollocks that I try to fend off as best I can but still gets through and shows itself mostly as boredom and an inability to make my mind up about what I want to do from one minute to the next. Suppose it could be down to me coming from a week of late shifts straight onto a week of the early shifts, maybe my body clock hasn’t had time to adjust or some shit like that.  I think I’m just a bit more sensitive to people who call up their ISP at 8am to complain about something, and by sensitive I mean immediately angry at. For the past week or so the company website has been playing funny buggers, and a fair few people haven’t been able to get into their email, but there’s a neat little way to get into them by manually typing in the URL for the web mail and logging in that way, sorted. But that’s not good enough for some people, they want “compensation.” Not even for not being able to access it, but because they’ll have to go in a different route that seemingly throws them three miles out of their comfort zone, and all that really changed was four letters at the beginning of a URL and not having to look at adverts. I’d have more respect for them if they were just honest greedy bastards, but some of them seem to think they’re so fucking fragile the slightest inconvenience needs a monetary reward as a sorry for something they’re provided for fucking free.

Aside from that, the phone routing system was fucked as well, so the little experiment in only dealing with customers in the first few months of a contract has come to an abrupt halt for the time being and I was chucked back into “Gen Pop” to deal with regular calls. Intelligence levels of every caller plummeted, the sense of entitlement skyrocketed, and I’ve had to spend half my time telling people that no, I don’t give a pair of spunk-slicked hoor’s knickers if the man from India gave you a tenner credit to get you off the phone, you’ll be getting fuck all from me. To the man with “Wank” in his name: you are by name as you are by nature, ya cunt. And finally to the councillor from Wigan: only I’m allowed to slag the Indians, because they’re my brothers from other mothers in regards to this job, so I took offense at your request to be transferred to a British person, and made sure that you were deep into Delhi before I transferred you over.

Friday saw me in the pub that is quickly becoming the work regular. Along with one of the higher-ups (my open loathing of the public seemingly no barrier to networking) I found myself getting a headstart on the drinking, deciding to continue with my philosophy of a slow, steady descent in drunkenness then fucking off home when I had just enough money to pay for a taxi and wasn’t in any immediate danger of sobering up before I passed out in bed. I learned a few things that night, like I’m perfectly willing to steal the decorative hardback books in a pub just in the off-chance that the world’s greatest story is somehow hidden inside. I also learned that my attention span is not good enough to follow through with this idea after I’ve necked a day’s wage in cider. Also that for all the slut I am, it doesn’t matter how big a girl’s tits are when she picks her nose with her thumb in public.

The weekend proper seen me trying to find time to fill given that I couldn’t muster the motivation to go to the gym, or get myself in the right flavour of bad mood that makes me think “What’s the point in not going?” So I’ve found myself with a dozen books ordered from Amazon with a half-dozen more still en route, and a couple of Judge Dredd comics, one medium I’ve never taken an interest in. Tying that all up were episodes of Doctor Who that I’d never seen since they’d been aired seven years ago, both moderately enjoyable and triggering me to think what I was doing back then. I also bought a suit for my cousin’s wedding, my first proper suit, which will hopefully never be worn outside of weddings, funerals, and job interviews. Curious how closely related they are.

Today I’ve just worked, tomorrow I shall work some more, and I might just come on here and moan about the people I talk to. Who knows, play your cards right and it might just be you one day!

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