Good and tired of bad aggravations

Life is wearing me out. Nothing is simple anymore. And despite what some may think, I am just a simple girl at heart.

Everything, it seems, takes so much effort, so much time. I seldom find anything that can be handled with one phone call or one request.

Take Aunt Cora, for instance. She loves to help me and often calls and asks, “What can I do to help you?”

Occasionally, I’ll take her up on the offer and say, “Well, you could do so-and-so.”

Inevitably, she replies, “That’s not what ya need to do. What ya oughta do is such-and-such.”

I never want to do such-and-such. I always want to do so-and-so. It then becomes a huge, energy-depleting debate, which turns into an argument.

“Why that’s the biggest nonsense I’ve ever heard,” she’ll huff indignantly. “You don’t have a lick of sense.”

I agree. I have lost most of it along the way with the countless problems I encounter.

“Aunt Cora, please just do what I ask you,” I’ll say, coming close to sounding suspiciously like pleading.

And guess what? Without fail, she’ll always do such-and-such and never so-and-so like I asked.

Now, Aunt Cora is only one source of aggravation. The other aggravations actually come from people or companies I am paying. You would think because the buck is rumored to stop with me that I could actually control those aggravations. Wrong.

I dream of the day when I don’t have to repeatedly call companies, press numerous buttons to get to a person who then either doesn’t know how to solve the problem, doesn’t care how to fix it or, just as bad, promises anything to get me off the phone. Then, of course, does nothing once I’ve hung up.

In addition to the appliance store manager who cussed at me when his people made a mistake and the propane company that refused to install a thermostat on a tankless hot water heater for which they’re an authorized dealer, I have completely exhausted my patience with the telephone company.

Trust me, this is a saga you don’t have time for and I don’t have the inclination to relive. But I’ll tell you this – it was ludicrous when phone company employees could not agree on whether DSL service was available at my new address. For a while, we were running 50/50 on their opinion. Isn’t that funny? Their opinion! These people are giving me their opinion, not professional, decisive information.

Then, I had to argue against almost $50 in overcharges, which took a $100 of my time. This, though, was nothing compared to the blood-pressure-raising experiences of trying to get my old office phone number forwarded to my new office number.

Ten days, nine people – including two supervisors – and several promises that it would be done “by midnight,” resulted in nothing. Each morning the sun rose and my old office number was still ringing in the same place.

Phone services are not cheap so I’ve paid this company a lot of money to aggravate me by giving me migraines, ill feelings and no customer service. For a company born and raised in the South, it isn’t a very gracious way to act.

And, to be frank, my graciousness was about to be gone with the wind until the executive offices stepped in and rescued me.

But I’ll be honest: it makes me appreciate Aunt Cora a lot more. After all, I don’t have to pay her to aggravate me. She does it for free.