waiting waiting

I hired Task Rabbit to come get my two IKEA chairs. She was supposed to be here at 10. She actually picked the time. Her calendar said 10:30 which is what I picked but she said a job had just come in and would 10 work. Sure.

Cut to this morning. I'm showered and dressed. The chairs are by the front door. It's now 11:15. I get a text saying she is delayed. It sounds like only by 10 or 15 mins. I say fine. It's now 10:50 and I've heard nothing but crickets.

Oh well. At least now I don't have to worry about how much to tip. Because of the job minimum she's getting paid way more than the job is worth anyway. No tip needed. As long as the damn chairs are gone, I don't really care.

And I don't have a whole lot scheduled for today. I was kinda considering a Goodwill shop but I really only need the steps and I can get them walking around the block. It's a lovely, cool, overcast day. No reason not to at least walk the parking lot today. Once the task rabbit gets here.

I used to wonder...

Back in the olden days, when I was working, I used to wonder what it would be like to have the time and mental space to deal with stupid life problems instead of stealing a stressful few minutes here or there and doing a half assed job.

I thought of that about a million times today.

The Task Rabbit lady finally showed up and the chairs disappeared and it was way way cheaper than one of the junk haulers. I asked her to take them to Goodwill but added that I did not care one bit as long as they were gone from my house. She was an hour and a half late but I was very pleasant to her and she was to me and we spent less than a minute in each other's company. I gave her 5 stars and she gave me a 10% discount on next time.

I went out to walk the parking lot which was fine and picked up the mail on the way back. Rather than chuck it without looking, I looked and there was an plain white envelope that I opened. It told me that my IBM pension check deposit request was rejected and they would be sending me a paper check instead. WTF???

I had changed bank accounts which I've done a bunch of times with no issue only this time there was an issue. No idea what the issue was but REJECT. So I logged in and tried again. "Contact your banking institution for verification". Fuck that. I used another bank. Set it up, went back to check and it had reverted. Did it again. Again it kept going back to the account I no longer have. Very weird. Fidelity (who handles IBM pension) is, like IBM, usually excruciatingly efficient.

So I called them. I had to enter my social security number which was uncomfortable and then they wanted me to enter my password - on a telephone keypad. How many ways can you say NFW????? So once again, I just kept repeating, human, person, customer service, human, person, customer service and finally I got one.

She wanted to verify me and so wanted to know the date I started with IBM. No clue. It was sometime in the 70's but then I left for 10 years and joined again in the 80's. Well, she said, when did you leave IBM? Again, WTF? 93/94/95? Then she wanted to know my 6 digit IBM employee number.

Hilariously, those digits live in the part of my brain that remembers complete song lyrics from the 50's an 60's. She was shocked when I rattled off the 6 numbers correctly.

After massive todo including a 15 minute hold (I think their computer system crashed) and a transfer to another person, I think I have it fixed.

I won't know for sure until November but I should be able to look in a few days and at least see that their online system has it correct. It's only a little over $1k a month but, hey, it pays a lot o' bills.

Then I was in the kitchen and getting some ice when I saw there was quite a bit of sediment in the bin. So I cleaned it all out which was a huge mess because it weighs 479 tons. I sacrificed a lot of paper towels to the project. Then I couldn't remember how to start it up again and Google was just fucking with me. But the machine has this ridiculous app that is 100% useless EXCEPT it does connect via bluetooth and will tell you the current state of the ice maker. I was able to see it was still in cleaning mode. Flipped that switch and all was good.

Now I am whipped into submission. I'm going to put my feet up. Play a couple of rounds of backgammon and then watch TV and crochet.