akaemi.com

I promise.  I mean, at 28, I’m pretty darn growed up.  I’ve been out of college longer than I was in it.  I own a home.  I’m married.  I have a career, not just a job.  If that’s not grown up, I don’t know what is.

And yet, I am often mistaken for a teenager.  When I was 22, it wasn’t so surprising, as I was only a few years out of teenage-hood.  But as I get closer and closer to 30, it throws me when someone makes the assumption that I’m 10 years younger than I am.  Like when I started a new job a few months back and people assumed I was a new intern.

At church last year, I taught the ladies’ group once a month.  It was always nerve-wracking, especially considering my youthful-looking-ness.  I mean, are ladies ranging from 20 to 65 really going to take an 18-year-old know-nothing seriously?  I think, though, it actually played to my advantage:  if I ever said anything completely preposterous, they just chalked it up to my ‘age.’

So, this year, I have been asked to teach the 8-year-old children.  I was excited at the prospect of teaching people who readily accepted my grown-upped-ness.  I mean, they’re 8 - anyone over the age of 14 is grown up to them.

Or so I thought.  After finding out where all the kids go to school, one of the boys asked me where I went to school.  I informed him that I was done with school.  High school, colllege, all in my past.  He looked at me, and decided to accept my response.  “Oh, I thought you were a teenager,” he explained.

I just can’t win!

Now, I’m not really complaining.  I mean, cuz when I’m 40, I’ll really love looking 10 years younger.  The husband will love walking around with his hot, young, trophy wife.  But right now, I wish people would take me seriously.  And, well, the husband really could do without the looks of disdain from all those lolita-haters out there …

I’ve always had a little mistrust for dhl - the ups wannabes - but never had a solid reason why.  Oh, except for the package they delivered to my husband by placing it at the door of the people 6 doors down from us - luckily my husband was expecting a dhl package, so he glanced down at it as he walked past, and sure enough, it had his name on it.  It wasn’t even mislabeled or anything.  How hard is it to match an address?  I mean, if it’s like YOUR JOB.  The ONE thing you were HIRED to do?

So when I ordered my shiny new happiness last week, I was dismayed to get the confirmation email that stated that shipment would be via dhl.  Now, I had opted for the normal ‘free’ shipping - so I guess I shoulda known that I was gonna get exactly what I paid for.

As soon as dell sent me my tracking number, I registered with dhl so they would send me email updates.  Specifically, I wanted to know when my package was out for delivery.  It was a signature-required package, so I wanted to be able to like, oh, be home when they delivered my package.  I checked my email all day today, and the last thing dhl sent me was a notification that my package had arrived at the local chantilly facility.  There was no ‘Your package is out for delivery notification.’  So I worked late today, in anticipation of a delivery attempt early next week that I might want to bail out of work early for.

When I got home, the husband let me know that dhl tried and failed to deliver my package today.  They left a note on the door stating that they would redeliver on monday.  And there was a phone number in case I had any questions.  There was no ‘Your package will be at X after Y o’clock and available for pickup’ on the note.  Like, say, ups, fedex, and the good ol’ usps provide. 

I grumbled at dhl and assumed they wouldn’t have a pick-up facility.  Because, well, surely they would have mentioned it on their note?  After dinner, the husband finally convinced me to call the number and ask if I could pick the package up.  Well, it so happens that I was able to do just that.  The lady on the phone was ever so helpful, even giving me the address of the facility, and calling the facility to let them know I was on my way to pick up my package.  She was very adamant that the place closed at 8, and I was all, relax lady, it’s a quarter to 7 … 

I arrived at the chantilly dhl office at 7:15 expecting them to have already located my package.  I was expecting to be in and out in 5 or 10 minutes.  I should have known something was up when I got there and found 8 or 10 cars in the parking lot.

I entered the lobby of the dhl facility and found 10 people already waiting.  No one behind the counter.  Only one guy had seen a dhl employee, he had given her his slip.  20 minutes earlier.

We could hear several dhl employees.  They were having some kind of fight.  I’m not sure what about, but it was very animated.  I played my daily sudoku game on my phone.  And then I surfed the internet on my phone - brit lost custody of her kids.  And there are 5 states that you can get executed in for child-rape, though the last person executed for it was in 1964.

By 7:30, there were 20 or so people in the lobby.  Still no sight of a dhl employee.  No one knew exactly what was going on.  Some people left. 

7:35, a dhl employee sighting!  Oh, but she was on her way out.  She had been there since 5 am, I guess I won’t begrudge her for going home.  She promised that there were still dhl employees there. 

7:38, a slightly tipsy man in the back told his girlfriend he was going to put her in a dhl box and ship her.  And she would be LOST FOREVER because it was dhl, and he would get away with murder.  We all agreed it was a fool-proof plot.

7:40, a man in the lobby called dhl’s chantilly office.  To let them know there were 25 impatient people in the lobby - and 5 more outside.  In 35 degree weather. 

7:45, a surprisingly pleasant ups man showed up behind the counter.  No, for real, he was wearing a ups shirt.  Cross my heart.  After reassuring everyone that dhl was his part-time gig, he asked for ashburn and south riding slips.  Because, well, those were the trucks that had already made it back.  Lucky for me, I was in that group, so I handed him my slip. 

The man who had seen his slip disappear almost an hour earlier asked the ups man if there was still a dhl lady back there, and if she was like, crushed and dying under a pile of heavy boxes.  Because, well, that is the most reasonable explanation for why she would take his slip, and then disappear for nearly an HOUR without checking on the status of the lobby.  Or without coming back to let him know she was still looking. 

7:50, the elusive dhl lady showed up and gave the very angry man his package.  She took some more slips.  The ups man arrived with a few boxes, and had the dhl lady sign them out.  (As a ups man, he had no such package sign-out privileges.) 

7:52, a man arrived to SHIP packages.  Like A LOT of packages.  He brought them ALL into the lobby - building a fort almost completely around one man.  We were all bewildered as to why anyone would choose to ship via dhl.  And why he had to bring all his boxes into the lobby while it was packed with people. 

7:55, the ups man arrived with my package!  He called out my street, in lieu of my name.  Didn’t feel up to the challenge of ‘akaemi,’ I guess.  I moved up to the counter and gazed longingly at my box.

8:00, closing time for the chantilly office.  There were still 20 people in the lobby.  No dhl employee had arrived to let me sign out my package.  I contemplated taking it and running.  And then I contemplated opening it and playing with it on the counter.

8:05, two dhl men showed up and started handing out packages.  Tipsy got his and signed out before me.  As the dhl men were about to scurry off to locate more packages, I begged them to sign me out, seeing as my box was RIGHT in FRONT of me on the COUNTER.  They obliged, and I was able to finally leave that horrible, horrible place. 

We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming (the nerdly chronicles) to talk about something much more important: customer service gone bad.

2 weeks ago, my husband and I made the switch from AT&T/Cingular/the new at&t to Sprint. We didn’t have any issues with at&t, we were just intrigued by Sprint’s fastest data network. And with the uber-secret $30 SERO plan, it seemed like a deal that we couldn’t pass up. Add fancy palm phones, and we were sold.

A week and a half ago, Sprint initiated our phone number port. We received a phone call, on our home phone, from Sprint, telling us that the port was complete. They gave us a phone number and asked us to call back in order to activate our phones.

So my husband did exactly that. He called the phone number that the guy from Sprint left on our answering machine. He told the nice lady that our numbers had been ported, and he wanted to activate our phones. After getting our account number, all four phone numbers (2 ported numbers and 2 temporary numbers), and our pin number, she informed him that she had no idea what he was talking about. She had no record of any number port. But would he like to be transferred to someone else who might be able to help? 7 transfers later, nobody was able to help; in fact, he had received 6 different answers from those 7 different people. There was some almost-name-calling, and then the call was over.

For one day, I was unable to receive phone calls at my number. at&t had released it, because Sprint told them to. Not a big deal, that’s the price you pay when you port a number from one carrier to another. As soon as dialing my phone number greeted me with a ‘You have reached the Sprint mail box …’, I called up Sprint to activate my phone with my newly ported number. It involved being transferred to 3 or 4 different people, but they were eventually able to get me up and running.

Once my phone was working, I asked about activating my husband’s phone. The lady who helped me activate my phone got all of my husband’s information from me; after a few minutes, she informed me that she didn’t see his ported number in the system, so she transferred me to the porting department. At the porting department, I gave them all the information again. They informed me that they didn’t see his numbers in their system - which meant that they were in the NEW system, and they would need to transfer me to the NEW system department.

Which brings up the question: why have some numbers in one system, and other numbers in another system - and NOT give your customer service reps access to BOTH SYSTEMS? A customer service rep cannot be of any help if they are completely unable to, say, service your account.

Once I was transferred to the NEW system customer service lady, she was able to tell me that my husband’s number had indeed been ported, but for some reason, it had not been linked to his account. She would escalate this issue to the technical support department - and ‘Would it be ok if this took 5 to 7 days?’ I didn’t even know how to answer that question. I mean, it was apparent that I didn’t have a choice in the matter. ‘Would it be ok?’ No, the world wasn’t going to end if it took 5 to 7 days to resolve the issue. Nobody would die. My husband is not a world-renowned emergency surgeon who can ONLY be contacted on his ported cell phone number that no longer worked. But would I be upset if it really took 5 to 7 days to resolve a seemingly minor issue?  Yes!  It’s not rocket science. (Problem: un-linked ported number. Solution: link the ported number.) She got a call-back number from me and assured me I would receive a call from the technical service department.

7 days and no call back later, I called Sprint. Due to my husband’s previous experience with dealing with Sprint on the phone, I was the designated Sprint caller.

The first lady I talked to informed me that my husband’s ported number belonged to Virgin Mobile. I had a brief flip-out, (”YOU GAVE THE NUMBER TO VIRGIN MOBILE?????”), and once I regained my composure, she was able to transfer me to the porting department. After a fight with the porting department lady who wanted my at&t account information in order to port my number (YOU ALREADY PORTED THE NUMBER, BUT IT’S NOT LINKED TO THE ACCOUNT, I WAS ON PAPER-FREE BILLING, AT&T CLOSED MY ACCOUNT, I CAN’T LOG IN ANYMORE TO GET MY ACCOUNT NUMBER, BESIDES I ALREADY GAVE YOU THAT INFORMATION, YOU SHOULD HAVE IT ALREADY), she discovered that the number had been ported but not linked to the account. So she transferred me to somebody else.

That guy told me he was going to escalate the issue to technical support. I told him my issue had been escalated to technical support 7 days before. He could tell I was exasperated, so he did something he ‘wasn’t supposed to do.’ He gave me the number to technical support. (877-345-7895. They know what they are doing. They rock as much as the rest of Sprint customer service sucks.)

So I called technical support. I explained my problem. He believed me. He put me on hold for awhile, while he waited on hold for some other department within Sprint. After checking back on me a few times, he informed me that it was going to be awhile, so he got a call-back number for me.

20 minutes later, he called back! And he helped me activate my husband’s phone. That issue that took 5 to 7 days to resolve? Really took one guy 30 minutes.

I really don’t like my afternoon DJs. They have annoying voices, they are obnoxious, they say dumb things, and everytime I hear them speak I wish they’d hurry up and put another song on already. I may have thought that the bad-DJ phenomenon was coincidental, but I have 4 radio stations, and they all have bad afternoon DJs.

My morning DJs are nice. They have pleasant voices. They are funny. They talk about interesting and amusing things. In short, they make my drive to work a little more enjoyable.

So why does it all fall apart in the afternoon? I would think that radio stations would want to put their best and brightest on the air during commute times, as that is when they get the most listenership. Either good DJs are hard to find, or radio stations don’t value my patronage. Which is a-ok with me, my iPod never lets me down.