Archive for August, 2008

An unexpected problem of car ownership

My usual visit to the post office box yesterday turned into an adventure. I had a letter from Land Transport NZ telling me that I was no longer the owner of my car.

So, I promptly re-registered myself as the owner, then went home to try and unravel the situation.

There’s a handy thing you can grab, called the Vehicle Information Report. Amongst other things, it shows you the names of previous / current owners of any vehicle. Other than my registration, all of an hour old, it showed that NZ’s biggest insurance company (well, the umbrella company who own a bunch of others – including the company I’m insured with) had acquired the ownership of my car.

Two days after I bought it.

What the fuck.

I called the police, to doublecheck there weren’t any reports of theft against my car. There weren’t – but there was a record of it having been nicked in June (with the previous owners) and then recovered two weeks later.

So, either someone Really Fucked Up at the insurance company, or someone’s trying to fiddle their insurance company.

Of course, this was after business hours, so all I got was a polite brushoff from a sweet young claims assistant, who explained it was probably a typo and not to worry. It was frankly not worth bitching about at that point, so I gave up for the night.

See, the typo theory just does not wash with me. That implies that it’s OK for insurance clerks to a) waste $10 of their employers money (an ownership transfer costs $10) and b) sort of steal someone else’s car.

The catchphrase for said insurance company is “Help just happens”. I really don’t think they’d prefer “We accidentally steal cars!” instead.

This morning, I have managed to get a different team on the phone. They have punted me up the chain to yet another team, who have Lots of System Access. They promised to call me back after investigating.

I don’t know if it helped or hindered that I have my own insurance with said company. I suppose it adds an element of “Let’s not piss off the person who pays the bills.”

Eventually, I received a telephone call to explain. The folks who owned it when it was stolen had it deregistered, and claimed it on the insurance. I can only imagine that when it was found, they didn’t get it back? I don’t know, that particular bit of the story (due to privacy laws) wasn’t shared with me.

Either way, the insurance company, working with the promptness one expects (ie, it took a month) transferred the ownership of the car to themselves using the engine’s chassis number. Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do, with a stolen car that may or may not have the same plates.

The situation is resolved, the car is legally allowed to be mine, and I am much relieved.

2008
08/26
CATEGORY
car
well FUCK
Comments Off

Little charmers.

Towards the end of a (long, tiring, frustrating) shift today, I was installing Office on a PC in the call center attached to our workplace. The joys of remote control.

It was a bit of a rush/favour install, to the manager down there, who has had to dick around with licensing agreements and such to get the poor girl on the computer access to Excel. It’s been a bit drawn out, and the guy was so relieved to find a solution that I practically promised to install today, despite having other priorities.

When Office got up to the “Hello! I need a product key!” stage, I became aware that someone else was driving. They typed in hello mr HACKER (sic). So, like a good IT monkey, I brought up Notepad.

ALSO KNOWN AS THE SERVICE DESK.
Kindly allow me to finish installing Office
Thank you.

Their response? Well, see the screenshot linked above.

I was absolutely flaming mad. So violently angry I was shaking. You just do not do shit like that in the workplace. Ever. Have whatever sense of ‘humour’ you like in the privacy of your home or with your acquaintances! Just not at work to a stranger!

I called said Manager on his mobile phone, demanded as politely as I could manage* that he find out RIGHT NOW who was sitting in front of that PC, as it probably wasn’t the best manners to type “hello hacker” into the product key window, and ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE to respond to my following comments with SIG HEIL.”

The manager was somewhat gobsmacked**, and promised to deal with it immediately.

He rang back five minutes later. Apparently the shitbucket responsible had tried to skedaddle as soon as he caught Manager emerging into the call center – I’ve dealt with Manager in a bad mood, at 200km distance over a telephone, and it was no fun and it wasn’t even my fault. Manager informed me that apparently this charming person hadn’t been aware of the Nazi associations of the phrase***, which made him (direct quote) as stupid as he was annoying; and that he would not be troubling me forthwith.

If nothing else, the adrenalin shot from the anger woke me up for the first time this week. The Lurgy has been quietly eating my brain and energy reserves, so that was a pleasant side effect.

But seriously. What kind of shit-for-brains cockwalrus moron actually types SIG HEIL on a bloody WORK COMPUTER to a TOTAL UNKNOWN WHO HAS ADMIN RIGHTS? In the middle of a CALL CENTER, surrounded by PEOPLE? Clearly he didn’t expect me to be able to go straight to the manager, and I’ll admit it was a long shot that the culprit would be enough of a twatting moron to still be sat there, but…

*Boss later informed me that I was behaving with extreme politeness, which I was somewhat surprised by.
** “Yer… wha… who… I don’t, well, I believe you, it’s you, but whaaa… the… Yes. Right away.”
*** Boss’s response, with which I emphatically agree: “Fucking bollocks, he didn’t know.”

2008
08/21
CATEGORY
work
5 comments

Dummy!!

I am once again at the point where I desperately need a holiday from work. I’m getting angry and frustrated at the unending unerring stupidity, I’m sick of one of my coworkers, my mother asked a stupid question the other day and it is a Good Thing that I was not on the telephone with her at the time, as I would have chewed her out for being retarded.

Kat rescued me from insanity and had lunch with me yesterday, and whilst retailing the story, I finally saw the funny side.

See, there’s a rewards-points scheme Mum and I belong to (we share the account). She sent a text message, requesting one of the rewards from said scheme. The service responded with You have not registered your phone number. Please respond with reg , eg reg 1234567812345678 ddmmyy. Mum read that as “A whole bunch of numbers and things I didn’t understand, then it called me a dummy.”

I did manage to explain, in my politest “I work tech support” voice, that she’d essentially done the equivalent of calling Pizza Hut from her mobile, saying “Hi, Hawaaian, my house, 20 minutes” and hung up without any further details, and she did get it.

I maintain that I am my father’s daughter.

2008
08/13
CATEGORY
family
work
2 comments

Shaping up.

Work has a gym that costs $3 a week. I joined last week, and have actually started going.

I’ve also downloaded a podcast series which, while somewhat less than mindblowingly fun to listen to, is very helpful in maintaining a good speed. (It’s an interval training series – first gets you to running 5k, then 8k, then 10k, etc.)

Frankly, I’m tired of being fat. I’m tired of looking in the mirror and seeing the wobbly rolls. I’m tired of buying the fat girl clothes, tired of the looks and expressions, tired of having pamphlets shoved in my face by recruiting gym bunnies. I’m tired of making excuses to myself about why I got fat, tired of avoiding exercise because of dark nights and the cold and the rain, tired of saying “But I’m pretty fit for a fat girl!”, tired of complaining about myself, tired of not liking my appearance, tired of lugging around the equivalent of a couple sacks of potatoes every time I take a step.

I was fit, before I left my hometown, and I let it slide when I moved. Mind you, there were a lot of reasons for that. I wasn’t exercising for the right reasons – it was a distraction, not something I did for itself or for myself.

And then I took the shitty callcentrehell job, and retreated into my shell, and I piled on the weight and lost the fitness. I gained a dress size in two months! Not to mention the muscle tone I lost, stamina I lost, general fitness I lost. Yes, I could always walk for ever – I honestly am fairly fit for a fat girl – but I looked bad. I’d added at least one more chin to my collection, my skin was looking pasty, and most importantly I was very unhappy about it.

I’ll never be skinny. Nor do I really want to be. I’m not built like a twig, I have what are politely referred to as child bearing hips, and I lost the thigh gap approximately age 12, when I hit puberty. My lowest weight in my teens was maintained by dint of having a somewhat unhealthy relationship with food, something it’s taken me a few years to straighten out. (No, I wasn’t anorexic or bulimic. But I didn’t exactly have heart-to-hearts with my plate either.) For that matter, I suspect I screwed up my metabolism for a while there – when I returned to normal eating, I piled on the weight like crazy. Three dress sizes in two years REALLY leaves you with funky stretchmarks. And yes, I ended up going up four dress sizes between ages 17 and 23.

Through some slightly more sensible eating and drinking, I’ve lost a dress size this year. I’d already lost weight, just through leaving callcentrehell and removing the stress. It’s a good start. Friends have commented I’m looking healthier. Heck, two of my workmates have commented! I’m feeling better, too.

I’m joining the gym for me, this time. I’m sure I won’t enjoy it all the time. I’m sure I’ll have days where I give up after half an hour, or I don’t bother because I slept badly. I’m not fond of exercising in company, so I’ll probably steer clear of busy times (my shifts will help there), and I’m sure there will still be days when I make excuses.

I want to be fitter, healthier, happier in my skin. Not for anyone else’s reasons; just because I’ve spent too much time making excuses to myself, and I’ve had enough.

2008
08/04
CATEGORY
girl
5 comments