Friday, September 08, 2006

of course 2: look out for falling anvils

You know how you always think "Well, it can't get any worse right? It's all better after this". Well, you would be wrong (as would I for thinking that).

Wednesday morning, because my car was on the street by the service shop, I had no way to get to work. I walked down to the service shop with a key, got it checked in and was told it would probably be looked at later that day. I walked home and tried to figure out what to do. My friend Julie offered to drive me to work (Thanks Julie) and I actually felt like I was accomplishing something throughout most of the day. The service shop called and said that it looked like it was the alternator (which is what I thought) and they were going to get it into the shop that afternoon and it would be done "first thing in the morning". My friend Sunny Jim* offered me a lift home from work and the day was going okay. I figured things were looking up.

(do you sense the foreboding?)

Thursday morning, because the Service Shop Guy said it would be ready first thing in the morning, I didn't bother trying to arrange a ride to work and had told them I would be in when the car was ready. Then I waited. And waited. And maybe I waited a bit.

I called the Service Shop and couldn't get the Guy who was looking after my car. When he finally called he said it was "just the battery" so that would be "$200". I talked to my friend Sunny Jim just after that and told him what the Service Shop Guy had said. Sunny Jim said he could get me a battery for about $60 and install it himself so I called the Service Shop Guy back and left a message to not do anything.

THEN 20 minutes later the Service Shop Guy said that they had finally done the evaluation on the car and it needs an alternator. (this was the THIRD time that the SAME GUY told me that they had had a look at my car and here's what's wrong with it) He said this with a note of surprise in his voice, even though that was what he and I had originally thought. Then, SURPRISE, it was going to come to just over $500! (they said just under $400 the day before)(yikes) I told him that my friend was going to be there with the battery soon and when Service Shop Guy heard me say that my GUY friend was coming to the Service Shop, suddenly my alternator dropped about $200 in price!! Shocking!!

So THEN it took about 2 hours longer to do the work than what they said and it was too late to bother going in to work anymore.

I was a bit concerned about how things would be at work today, since I missed a whole day. I had kept them informed about what was going on but my internal dictator is telling me I shouldn't have missed work.

THEN this morning, a bunch of really unsettling stuff happened at work, but since I would really like to not end up losing my job because I wrote about work, I will be cryptic. Let's just say that people I liked don't work with me anymore and people I don't necessarily get along with as well still work here but have said interesting things about me and everything feels really shakey.

*Sunny Jim is obviously not his real name. His real name is Sneaky Pete.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ecckkkk. You're right. I was wrong.

Ok, so I'm cautiously optimistic about the probability that it gets better from here. Let's hope it does.