See Part I below for the beginning.
Part II: Thank you for not screwing me big time
Alas, determined not to let the utility companies get a cut of my financial pie, I attempted to deal directly with the cable companies. I looked into Comcast again, because I had forgotten my previous experience when they rammed ridiculous monthly charges down my throat, and also because they were cleaver and changed their service name to something like x-finity. They almost had me too. Wait, these guys must be different, they have a tendy-ish name now, and I’m not sure what it means. Please, let me sign up for more ambiguity with a cable company.
I ended up attempting to sign on with AT&T, but successfully convincing them to let me pay them an exorbitant amount of money for a monthly service proved miraculously difficult. First of all, somehow, there is a waiting list eons long to get someone to install the service. If I’m president of one of these companies, the first thing I do is make it easy for people to pull an impulse sign-on. So you’re telling me you want to agree to pay me 80 bucks a month, starting today, and be locked in for a year? Great, I’ll have someone out there in a jiffy. If the pizza guys can pull it off, and they have to craft a delicious moon-shaped pie, before they leave, surely the cable company can figure out a way to have someone show up to install cable.
Alas, logic is futile in dealing with institutions of such size (partly because I think its in the hiring criteria that the employee be devoid of any common sense. Also, devoid of humor. Although, its possible they just have a ridiculously dry sense of humor and are skilled at using the hold button to mess with you. I think I like that running theory, I’m going to go with it. Makes me feel better about shelling out a fraction of my paycheck to those clowns). So, I was informed that I would have to wait about a month to have someone come out and install my internet/cable. I obliged, knowing that there was a fifty-fifty chance I’d have to work during the eight-hour window they gave me for arrival.
And I did. I found out definitively that I would not be able to be home when the cable guy came the day before he was slated to arrive and so I called to reschedule. Ha. If only. I was first admonished just to get a neighbor to be around and let them in. I attempted to inform the voice on the line that I knew very few neighbors, and much like your cable man, they all worked during business hours. She then advised me that it would be a great way to meet neighbors by asking by a favor such as this. I advised her that it was also a great way to lose your electronics, thus defeating the purpose of said service.
We finally agreed upon a date, a Sunday afternoon, long in the future that I would be home. I marked the date on my calendar, circled it with a big red marker, and promptly searched for a neighbor with unsecured wi-fi.
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