Virgin Mobile Bullshit

Y'all want to hear some Virgin Mobile bullshit? Of course you do. Story time. 

I'll begin with the admission that I'm horrible with phones. Like, almost impossible, you-would-think-I-was-exaggerating bad with phones. Luckily, I usually have insurance and I utilize that or take advantage of sales when my phone of the moment inevitably gets wet or dropped and dies a horrible phone death. 

A couple of weekends ago I killed a phone. The Phone Guardian website was giving me hell and Virgin Mobile was having a huge sale. So I ordered a cheap phone to replace my latest phone victim. 

After a few days I tracked my replacement phone. It showed delivered. This was an issue, considering the package was not in my possession. 

I called FedEx to verify the delivery address. FedEx confirmed my street address, but not my apartment number. When I asked which apartment the package was left at, the FedEx agent was basically all, "yeah...about that..." 

Without saying which one, I work for a carrier company. I am meticulous when I provide my delivery address for packages. Check and recheck. With confidence, I can say I definitely provided my apartment number. 

FedEx contacted their driver. Their driver had no idea where my package was delivered. Why the driver chose to deliver a package to an apartment complex when the apartment number was not on the label is an entirely different topic of discussion. But they created a case documenting this incident and provided me with the case number. 

Back to Virgin Mobile. 

I contacted Virgin Mobile in frustration. This is the process when a package is lost or damaged. You contact the shipper of the package, the source from which you purchased the item. In case you were wondering. 

So I contacted Virgin Mobile, a provider I have utilized and stuck with for years. 

I was met with a complete lack of empathy and what felt like accusation. I wanted a refund and was told that this would not occur without a police report being filed.

Okay, but, like, the package wasn't stolen... The phone was never addressed correctly for it to be delivered correctly. It was just delivered somewhere that wasn't my doorstep. I explained this, that I had spoken with FedEx, and that FedEx had made a record of their error.

Again I was referred to the police. What am I supposed to tell the police?

"Um. Hello? 911? Yes. Virgin Mobile did not provide my full address to FedEx, so FedEx delivered my box somewhere and now I don't have a phone and Virgin Mobile seems to think this is your problem."

What a waste of resources!

It wasn't as if my mail, which is federal, had been delivered to the wrong person and that person decided to open it and keep it. 

I explained my concern again. Again, I offered the case number FedEx had provided me. Again, I was spoken over and my problem was left unresolved and invalidated because "this is just how we do things. This is our process." The agent repeated that I needed to file a police report, rather than listening to understand how irrelevant a police report would be for my particular situation. 

The dialogue following this speech essentially implied that I was just lying in order to get my money back and I would not be believed until I filed a police report.

I escalated twice and both times was met with the same lack of empathy and understanding. Both times I was told I needed to file a police report.

I'll leave you with this analogy:

If you went to a restaurant and ordered cake and your server brought your cake to the wrong table and that table said "HELL YEAH! CAKE!" and decided to eat the cake, would you call the cops on the table eating your cake?

Hell no! Unless you are a crazy person!

You would ask your server to resolve this situation for you.

And only if your server is particularly shitty, would they tell you, "We won't believe you until you file a police report. How do we know we gave your cake to the wrong table? How do we know you're not scamming us?"

Basically, what I'm trying to convey, is Virgin Mobile's customer service is crap. The service their agents are trained to provide is scripted and is not tailored to meet individual customer needs.

And for this reason I am very tired, incredibly annoyed, and apparently out $40.

Spray Glitter At Your Fears And Still Be Afraid

I didn't want to panic or freak out today when I saw the thing in my periphery move quickly across my bathroom floor and toward the cabinet where I keep my towels.

I mean, maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. Perhaps it was a sweet, innocent little mouse staring in its own narrative in which it hoped I gave it a cookie. I'm clumsy, I could have dropped something that was rolling away without noticing...

Of course it wasn't any of those things!

My imagination had been rushing to excuse away the hideous truth! It wasn't any number of things I could have told myself it was. 

It was a fucking giant, horrible palmetto bug trying to wedge it's awful bug body and all of it's disgusting fucking limbs behind my cabinet door. A realization that immediately caused me to both panic and freak out.

I hate palmetto bugs. I. Hate. Them.

I firmly believe my fear for palmetto bugs is so deeply rooted it was instilled in me while I was in the womb. My mother tells a story about being hugely pregnant and home alone and reaching into a cabinet only to be latched onto by a monstrous palmetto bug. You cannot convince me her scream of terror did not resonate with fetal me. My mom probably would have given birth right then and there, had I not been so afraid of the bug myself that I opted to stay in the oven a little while longer. Like, until the coast was clear and it was actually time for me to be born. 

Naturally, when I saw the creepy hind legs of this insect demon poking out from behind the cabinet door, I was frozen with fear. I was vulnerable and without a weapon. Even with a weapon, the idea of smashing palmettos causes me to cringe and gag. I couldn't possibly bring myself close enough to kill it, but I also couldn't possibly live with a palmetto having free range of my bathroom. (Insert chilling image of shaking out a towel only to rediscover said palmetto.)

Oh hell no! I'd burn the whole place down before I let that happen!

Well, not really because I couldn't guarantee I'd be able to get my cats out in time, but you get the idea. 

This bug had to be stopped. 

I had to be the one to stop it. 

I kept my eyes on the legs while I reached for the first thing I could find: Silver glitter hairspray from two Halloweens ago. 

I slowly opened the cabinet door. 

There it was. 

That repulsive mother fucker. 

I squeezed down on the spray nozzle for that aerosol can as hard as I could, glitterizing my floor and everything surrounding the damn thing. It moved and so I shifted my arm and continued spraying until I felt sick from the fumes. 

Only when I was choking from the chemicals did I stop to examine the carnage. 

And wouldn't you know, the bug wasn't there. 

It was gone. Glittery, surely. But not writhing with regret for having crossed my path; not on its back waiting to die. 

I don't know where it went.  

For obvious reasons, I didn't want to stick my head in the cabinet where it was hiding. 

I didn't have time to stop and search for it. I had to go to work. 

Now I'm home from work and I have some time to secure my cats, I think it might be time to try some matches...

Childish name calling

I made the mistake once of having an opinion on the internet.

Okay, I've made that mistake dozens of times. Admittedly, it's caused me to have to remove my foot from my mouth here and there. But you know...

I had this opinion on the internet...

You can use your imagination. It was an opinion and it is controversial and guys, you won't believe this, but some one didn't necessarily agree with me.

It was a guy I used to work with.

He quickly advanced from disagreeing with me in comments on my post to personal Facebook messages.

The messages began with a few half-assed apologies in case he had offended me (he hadn't,) then quickly escalated to us arguing again.

I was getting ready for work while this argument was happening in my Facebook messages. The little bubble for his profile in the Messenger app ever present on my phone screen, the numbers next to it increasing, all while I'm trying to brush my teeth and watch some near pornographic video of a pasta dish being made.

My attention to his reasons for being right had already started to wane. I mean, how could he expect my undivided attention while I was watching anonymous hands layer ravioli with sauce and copious amounts of cheese?

I closed his bubble. He popped back up. I closed his bubble. He popped back up.

I decided to shut him down.

I was not going to stand for this kind of persistence during the next video featuring anonymous hands making quesadillas four different ways!

So I replied.

I said something like, "Okay. You're right. You're absolutely right. You are right and I am wrong. You are entirely omniscient. I apologize for not recognizing this sooner." In my head I added, now leave me the fuck alone so I can watch this quesadilla get dipped in guacamole.

He did not appreciate this answer. His response was along the lines of, "WOW. You know. I used to really respect you as a person, but the fact that you have resorted to childish name calling is making me reconsider. I thought we could have an intelligent conversation, but I guess I was wrong. Because here you are, childishly calling me names."

Look, I suck at debates. I roll my eyes, I lose interest, I use fallacies. I get it. But this person wasn't looking for intelligent conversation. He was looking to change my opinion to an opinion I already thought he was stupid for having. Sure, that's not very nice, but I wasn't fucking looking for a debate in the first place. I had made a post on Facebook and this person didn't agree with me. I was trying to put on pants while watching queso being drizzled over a fucking tortilla before going to my shitty job. Excuse me, for not wanting to go down the path to his version of enlightenment. I had already come to that fork. I had already picked a different path. I was not about to turn around.

I paused to read his text again before responding, "Childish name calling? You think I'm childish because I called you omniscient?"

"Yes," he said.

"Omniscient? You're offended and think I'm being childish because I called you omniscient?" I had to ask one more time to be clear.

"Yes. I'm trying to have an intelligent conversation and you resorted to being a child and calling me names," he repeated.

I couldn't help myself. I said, "You know children who toss around words like 'omniscient' to offend each other? Really? What kind of fucking kids are you hanging out with? I bet they're private school kids. You fucking nerd."

And then I closed his Facebook messenger app bubble to watch anonymous hands chop up spinach for a breakfast quiche.