My afternoon

I had been putting something off for awhile. It involved the phone and as you can imagine I don't have a lot of time to speak on the phone with a quiet background. I needed to get our utilities set up for our new house. Anytime you are dealing with utilites at some level you know you are in for an interesting experience. This afternoon did not leave me disappointed--or, I guess maybe it did. In any case, here are some of the questions/comments that I received (FYI, our new street name is William Dr.)

• Was questioned 6 times (3 by the same person)--are you sure it isn't "Williams" Dr.?
• "Oh, maybe it will accept the address if I put 2 "l"s in William" (by the same person who was sure it was Williams Dr instead of William Dr)
• "Do you know if the seller will be at closing? I really want to make sure her water bill gets forwarded correctly. Maybe you could talk to her?"
• Was asked 4 times "What is your phone number?" by the phone company; when I replied that I was inquiring about a new line, I was then transferred--yes, 4 times
• The internet guy wouldn't even attempt to pronounce the name of the town I was moving to. He just repeatedly said "the place that you are moving to"
• I called the internet place to see if I could get a list of their offers and packages (I was shopping around). I was on hold for at least 10 minutes. The guy who finally answered (Ben) seemed really nice, but also really young. Who knows, maybe he just had a young phone voice. Anyway, it took him at least 5 minutes to get my new city down so he could verify that they have service in that area. Once he verified that they have service in that town, he had to verify my new address. That proved to be a task that was beyond him. Evidently he was going to have to send a service guy out to the house to verify that the house is "servicable". Here is the punchline--I have to call them back in 5 days to see if the house is servicable. Okay--so I asked him "Well, can you go ahead and give me your current special offers." His response "I can't tell you until we know if you are servicable, but I can tell you that right now they are really, really awesome." Gee, thanks. I'll be sure to call you back in five days. As I was getting ready to hang up, Ben asked me "Do you have any other questions? I see you were on hold for 10 minutes and I want to be sure I get all your questions answered to your satisfaction." It was all I could do not to say "Your joking, right?"