First, the recorded phone message from UPS that tells me to have a check ready for a COD shipment. Listening to the recording, pen in hand ready to write down the amount, I wait through a 30-digit shipment ID number and a lot of other b.s. just to hear that amount. Which they only say once, thrown into the tail-end of a three-minute recording.
Here’s the bigger aggravation of the day: The flex-spending health care account that allows you to pay for medical, pharmaceutical, dental and vision care with pre-tax money you put aside weekly out of your paycheck. I understand it’s a use-it or lose-it situation and would really like to know how they get away with keeping your money, but an even nastier problem is convincing them that the expenses were genuine. I’ve spent more time and money in making copies of additional receipts they requested, mailing them out, arguing via website, e-mail, and telephone about legitimate expenses than the tax savings must be, yet they’re trying to keep $275 of my 2006 spending account by a sleight of hand reasoning. Since I didn’t specifically say that Dr. Stephen Hunter was an optometrist, his bill went in as health care and therefore, went under the 2007 account instead and now it’s too late to argue about it.
I’m getting so fed up with the lack of common sense and refusal to deal on a human-to-human being basis, that I’m really really looking to that little cabin in the woods not only to write, but to escape humanity.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology