Four years ago, I was expecting a tax refund. So everything was filed on time, and round about July I began to wonder where the hell my refund was (it really wasn't a great deal of money, but to a 21-year-old college student, $250 is a lot of trips to Taco Bell). Called the IRS and had a conversation that went like this: About 3 weeks later, my refund arrived, except it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 instead of the $250 I was expecting. There was a letter enclosed that said, "There was a problem with your refund, and the Internal Revenue Service adjusted the amount returned to you." I thought, in my youthful naivete, that I was entitled to some sort of explanation, so I called the IRS again. I was told by yet another android that (you guessed it!) "there was a problem with your refund," who then refused to offer any further explanation. Ever since then I've been convinced that the IRS is breeding soulless lobotomized customer service representatives in a secret laboratory somewhere. They're all being controlled in a borg-like fashion by an evil non-human creature named Xlixon who lives in a vat of formaldahyde and controls tax returns at whim via strong electrical currents. *sigh* It's really too bad that I'm not entirely delusional. I think I'd be really good at babbling at people on the street about my fantastic governmental conspiracy theories. The market's not real great for street babblers right now, though. Pity. Comment: Name: Pale Blue
Me: Hey. Where's my damn refund? (OK, OK, I didn't curse at the IRS, but I wish I had)
IRS: There was a problem with your refund.
Me: OK. What's the problem?
IRS: There was a problem with your refund.
Me: Yeah, you said that. What's the problem?
IRS: There was a problem with your refund.
Me: Uh...um...er...
IRS: Thank you for calling the Internal Revenue Service. Have a nice day.
Email: paleblue@darkblue.2ndmail.com
All customer service representatives are mindless drones - but they don\'t
breed them that way. They just lobotomise them.
I\'d like to share a story.
My sister is travelling in Thailand at the moment, and when she was planning
her trip, she calculated that she had enough room to take five audio
cassettes with her. I offered to compile a special travelling tape for her,
and I managed to get it finished just before she left.
Sadly, she left it behind.
Happily, I had the address of the hotel she was staying at in Bangkok, though
she was only planning to be there for three nights. So I decided to FedEx the
tape to her - no matter that the cost of postage was about fifteen times the
cost of the tape - I thought it would be fun for her to receive a cassette by
FedEx while staying in a Thai hotel, and that made it worth doing.
So, a few days later, I had a call from FedEx saying that they hadn\'t been
able to deliver it - some problem with the concierge, apparently.
I mailed my sister, who texted me back, asking whether the tape could be sent
to Chiang Mai - the next destination on her journey - and providing the
address of a post office where she hoped to collect it.
FedEx were pretty cool about it, and agreed to forward it on at no extra
cost.
My sister texted me before she left Chiang Mai, saying that the post office
had professed ignorance about the parcel. Not a huge problem, though - she\'d
be back in Chiang Mai in a week, and would collect it then.
A week passed, another message from my sister. Still no parcel.
I phoned FedEx, who told me that, rather than delivering the parcel to Chiang
Mai, they had decided to destroy it instead.
I heard the same story three times that day, from three different lobotomised
\'customer care operatives\' ... FedEx Bangkok called FedEx UK and said they
didn\'t have enough information to deliver the parcel to Chiang Mai (though
what else you would need apart from an address with postcode, I don\'t know).
FedEx UK should have called me to see if I had any further instructions. But
they didn\'t. Then they detroyed the parcel.
I\'m now in the process of claiming back the cost of postage, compensation
for time and trouble on my behalf and my sister\'s behalf, and finally, as a
matter of principle, I\'m claiming back the cost of the envelope I used to
file the claim, the stamp is used to post it, and the cost of photocopying
the fucking waybill.
Bastards.
I can\'t believe that the tape I spent one Sunday afternoon lovingly
recording, and making a glorious travelling-type cover for was carried all
the way to Bangkok by FedEx, only to be destroyed by them.
I wanted to ask them HOW they destroyed it, and what its final days were
like. Did it languish on a dull metal rack in some soulless FedEx hangar near
BKK airport? Did it watch the pickers walking up and down the aisle several
times a day, pulling off parcels, and loading them onto trolleys for
shipment, anxiously waiting for its turn? What did it think when it was,
finally, removed from the shelf? When did it realise that its exciting
journey was at an end?
Trauma.
posted by Kate at 8:15 AM link/comments
