For today, this 14th day of April in the year 2006 of the Common Era, Verizon Wireless has finally given me my goddamn deposit back. (I was young, my credit was new [not bad, dammit!], I foolishly thought I'd get it back promptly.)

It took three years of calling, faxing, emailing, and leashing a massive, unredirectable rage, BUT I DID IT. After biting my tongue in an effort at civility that became more difficult every time I called--because, of course, I could never speak to the same person twice, and any new rep with whom I was speaking could not justly be punished for the indifference/rudeness/incompetence of his or her predecessor--I finally managed to find a customer service rep who actually

a. Gives his real name and extension
b. Wants to solve problems
c. Follows up with others in his company
d. Calls back to update customers on his progress

It was a revelation. I do not know this man. I have never seen his face. We will never meet. And the only things we talked about were proofs of payment and cell phones. But all the same, I WILL LOVE HIM UNTIL MY DYING DAY.

By way of contrast:
Another rep told me to fax something to her attention and to expect a call from her the following Monday. The following Wednesday, I called her to ask what was going on, and could not be connected with her. When I asked if my fax had been received, this new person told me that unless my intended recipient was within yelling distance at the exact moment the fax was received, it would probably be tossed--that the volume of incoming faxes was so high that faxes weren't, say, put into people's inboxes or otherwise retained. Either this is true and they have the worst customer service system on earth, or it isn't true, and their reps lie, and they have the worst customer service system on earth. I wish I were making this shit up.

Anyway. Yes. Three years of frustration like that, of starting from scratch every time I called, of feeling angry every time I saw the Verizon logo--which was, you know, every time I used my phone, not to mention every time I went over the Manhattan Bridge on the train or turned on my TV. It was a lot of work to control the rage, but I did it; I was firm and tenacious but I was not rude to anyone. I'm proud of that. And now I'm finally free of it altogether. It's a great relief.

ADAIR: 1

The Man: 0

For a week and a half now, almost everything for which I have exchanged currency has either malfunctioned or not been what I wanted.

* I bought a new cell phone and it buzzed in my ear. Now it is being exchanged and I'm without a phone; mega fucking annoying. The cell phone place actually wanted me to pay to ship their defective product back to them. They then said that it may take them several days to process the return and if, when they exchange the phone, it has a higher price than when I initially purchased it, they will charge me the difference. I made them give me a shipping label to send it out to them and told them flat-out that I was not paying another cent, and they had better be prepared to eat any additional costs if the phone's price changes. I'm reasonably confident they will not stick to their ridiculous line. But it's exhausting having to put up a fight for what any reasonable person would consider the least the company should do. SINCE I WILL NOT HAVE A PHONE FOR A WEEK. Does anybody have decent customer service anymore?

* Went to get a bridesmaid dress hemmed and . . . I can't even go into all of it. Inconsideration, long waits, thinly veiled hostility: this is the shit you get away with when your customers can't go anywhere else.

* I went to get my hair highlighted, and I had to go someplace new because my usual guy moved to Jersey. I like to look like a brunette who has highlights rather than premature grays. Instead, my whole fucking head is lighter, but the highlights aren't even blonde, they're a brassy reddish brown, and when it doesn't make me want to cry, it makes me want to ram a meat hook through somebody's skull. I have to go back to get it fixed and part of me just KNOWS it will end up even worse.

* I tried to haul my old, busted monitor to Union Square this weekend for a free recycling day. Only things didn't work out right, the person helping me couldn't arrive till late, and we wound up having to take a car. Twenty bucks: cheaper than what most places charge to recycle a monitor, but still twenty dollars more than zero.

* I bought a microphone for my computer. It does not work.

* Without going into details, it also happened twice on the job--ordered something, got back something else.

In short, I am in heavy disgruntlement mode at this point and really want to pound something with a shovel. Repeatedly. If one more thing goes this way, I may have no choice but to stop where I stand and scream for a few hours until the rage dims.

Then I will offcially be one of those crazy people who walk around New York.

I am not usually huffy about lines. They are understandable, they are unavoidable, and they are supremely democratic. But my wait to express mail my POS phone back to the hellpit whence it came was an exception for several unimpeachable reasons:

1. I was only on the line because the self-service machine told me on step 9 of 10 that it could not perform its function. All line time was in excess of what ought to have been.

2. There is an unwritten code of conduct for DMVs, subways, and post offices, and it is predicated on the idea that nobody wants to be there and that if we all do our parts each of us can pretend we aren't. This requires that we do not take up more space than we need, we do not yap loudly on cellphones (especially when no one else in the room is talking at all) and we most emphatically do NOT sing along with any ambient music. ParTICularly a butchering of the wonderful "Got to Get You off My Mind". The woman in front of me on line was in flagrant violation of this code.

3. It was raining, and the gathering of wet people created an even more dank atmosphere than usual. This, while unpleasant, was not a problem. What WAS a problem, though, was that some bastard a few people ahead of me in line passed gas. Badly. And with the humidity in the room, the smell just hung there and we had no choice but to walk through and then stand in it. That is NOT right, it is NOT okay, and I damn near didn't make it anyway. When it hit, the man behind me in line had a look of such hurt and betrayal on his face that it bespoke not merely a nose but a soul in anguish. How could you, stranger on line? How could you?

When I finally left the post office (the whole thing took over an hour), it was with a feeling of great hatred. It had stopped raining, so I thought I would walk home and purge some angst. So there I was on the corner of Fulton St. beside a woman and her three girls, one in a stroller, when along comes some asshole booming down Fulton St. at at least 65 mph trying to beat a red light . . . and of course he swerves far right, goes through a massive puddle, and soaks us all before we can retreat.

To recap:

--Phoneless (still!)
--Shoddily customer serviced (trust me, that's how I wound up in the post office in the first place)
--Forced to walk through a fart-cloud
--Angry at learning too much about that chick's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend Shonda
--Covered in street water

NOT OKAY.