a fight to the top...

of the list of gigantic assholes.

my issues with dell and my credit card company are well documented, but today a new contender has emerged as a force: dhl.

dhl has some sort of contract with dell. you see, dell fucks up frequently enough that they have contracted with dhl for the latter to deliver the defective computers and accessories back to the former when someone under warranty has a problem. so yesterday i called dhl and arranged for a pickup of my own personal piece of shit. the woman asked me what time i would like them to pick it up, and i replied that anything late morning would be great. she asked how sometime between 10-2 was. i thought it sounded a little too cable company-ish, but i agreed.

as you might also know, last night was $1 draft night meaning today is hangover wednesday. and hungover i was when i got up at 9 today. i packed up my computer into the box, and waited. and waited. and waited.

at 3 the hangover was long gone but my bitterness had grown. i called demanding to know why they told me 10-2 (a time frame they suggested) if they weren't going to bother being here then. the customer service woman, obviously not very smart, seemed confused and transferred me to some guy. he told me they had changed my pickup time to 5, without calling to let me know mind you. i let him have it.

i angrily asked a series of sarcastic questions such as "i took half a day off from work, and now i'll miss the second half. are you going to cover the pay i'm missing?" he answered the questions sincerely. i cursed him out. he told me that due to where i live a driver couldn't come for pickup until the late afternoon. i then asked why they suggested the times they did. he didnt have an adequate answer for this. i asked him how his company was so incompetent that the people scheduling pickups and the people responsible for them dont know what each other is doing. he didnt have an adequate answer for this. i asked him how he thought dhl would get their own corner of the market from ups and fedex when they couldn't coordinate a simple pickup. he didnt have an adequate answer for this. i threw in a few more "jesus christ's" for flavor. he said he was sorry and i said you should be apologizing. he thought i said to stop apologizing, to which he said "sorry." i laughed.

i realize i could leave it on a box on my doorstep and they could pick it up whenever. but i dont like that. first, i dont trust people who have already fucked up bigtime in my only interaction with them. should anything happen, i envision them saying "oh, we went but it wasnt there." i'm not even willing to let that be a possibility. plus, we have people working on our house, and while i'm not horribly afraid of them stealing it, i wouldnt want one to accidentally trip on it or anything like that. in this world, the best way to get shit done right is to do it yourself. and i dont want to have to rely on other people to get shit done. i dont want to mess with other people's stuff, and i dont want other people touching my stuff if it's unnecessary. well, except dominique. she can touch my "stuff."

so now it's 410 and i'm still sitting here waiting for dhl. i suppose in the end it's wholly appropriate dell uses dhl for pickups. it's like they say in the downsyndrome glue factory---retards stick together.