I did indeed pay the bills after yesterdays journal entry. And a good thing too: among them was my first bill for cell phone service. This bill was about 6 pages long, and non-trivial to decipher, but it contained $25 worth of charges that I could find no rational explanation for. (Per minute charges, mostly for cell phone calls made from work. When I had used a grand total of 85 minutes of my 400 on my calling plan.)

So, I phoned Verizon customer service. I gotta say, I feel for the Verizon customer service people. Apparently they have these weird little scripts that they have to recite at the beginnings and ends of calls. Once I was connected with a human being and said, "Hi, I have a question about my bill," I was greeted with a rapid-fire monotone speech about it-is-my-mission-in-life-to-provide-
excellent-customer-service-and-at-Verizon-we-want-
you-to-know-that-your-problem-becomes-our-problem-
the-moment-you-call.

My immediate instinct was to respond, "I don't want my problem to be your problem. I want my problem to go away." I quashed this. No point in getting testy with a sweet lady with a Southern accent who surely does not get paid enough to do this job.

So, she got my billing information pulled up on her computer, and immediately exclaimed, "Good Lord! What is going on here?!"

To make a long story short, there were a baroque series of errors in the way my and Daniel's calling plans had been entered into the computer that meant they'd overcharged us by $50 on our bill. (Props to alert Verizon serviceperson for catching that extra $25 of charges.) So, she credited $50 to my account, and (hopefully) fixed all the errors in the computer so that this won't happen again.

Then we finished with another rapid-monotone speech: It-is-my-goal-to-provide-every-single-
customer-with-superior-service-Have-I-done-that-
for-you-this-afternoon?

Um. "Yeah." Oh, what the hell, she did save me an extra $25 that I hadn't noticed. "Yeah, you've been a great help. I really appreciate it. Thank you." Can I do anything for you, like calling Verizon management and telling them that their customer service scripts are dorky?

This must have been effusive praise by normal customer standards, because I could hear her beaming as she told me to have a good weekend.

But really, Verizon, if you're going to have your employees assure customers, "I will regard any blemish on your cellular phone experience as a stain upon my honor and will commit seppuku if I am unable to rectify it," could you at least coach them on how not to sound as if they're reading from a cue card?

But, anyway, the bills are paid. And I'm doing my laundry even as I type. In fact, it's time for me to switch the load to the dryer. Talk to you later.