A lesson from Reality 101—The Bureaucratic Shuffle

I will not go into an anti-corporate rant!

Mainly because I know that's just how they work.

*Example 1:** Spring [1] took enough days off between August 1^st [2] through August 13^th [3] for her trip to Sweden. Of course during the time she was away, her shift changed and she was of course expected to be back to work the day before she was to come home … possibly.

At the very least, she was expected to show up on the 14^th but because of the way they calculate this particular shift (third, it starts around 11:00pm) they day you go in is not the same day you work. Her department counts the day you work the most hours as the day you work so even though she had the 13^th off, she was still expected to show up on the 13^th to work on the 14^th.

Bloody idiots!

I've done the “get off vacation, head immediately to work. Do not stop at home. Do not get 200 minutes of sleep” thang before and yes, it sucks. But never had I had to do that after a twelve hour international flight (although to be fair, I had been travelling for at least twelve hours if not more but those are stores for another time).

So somehow, Negiyo shifted Spring's work schedule while on vacation and she ends up possibly oweing them a day of work.

*Example 2:** I call up FPL (Florida Power and Light) [4] to cancel service at Condo Conner [5]. I won't go into the rather long sordid tale (part of which is mostly my own stupidity) but in late July I was told that I could expect most of a payment I was making back when I discontinued service, as most of it was a deposit. So I call today to discontinue the service, expecting to get most of the deposit back.

Seems I'll end up owing FPL (Florida Power and Light) some money.

Um …

I paid a large sum of money to them, and I still owe them money?

I was then transfered to a billing specialist. A few minutes of talking it came to light that I was talking to the wrong billing specialist and I needed to talk to someone over in residential billing.

I think FPL automatically assume that anyone calling (and try, just try to get a live human operator there! Ha! That takes navigating the “Phone Voice System From Hell” first!) about electrical service is calling from the facility under question and not from some other location.

Since I'm calling from the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (an apartment complex) I ended up talking to a commecial billing specialist and not the residential billing specialist.

I'm still half expecting the pow

Ha ha, only joking.

I think.

Anyway, I'm now talking to the residential billing expert and we're going over the recent billing situation with Condo Conner. It comes to pass that the guys I talked to in late July were making everything they said up, of course, and that that's just the way it is; will that be check or credit card?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

[1] http://www.springdew.com/

[2] /boston/2002/08/01.1

[3] /boston/2002/08/13.2

[4] http://www.fpl.com/

[5] /boston/2002/08/08.1

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