You Had One Job...and You Still Failed

Trip one, back when I had hope

Last week...scratch that, the past three weeks have been a complete test of my patience. With group projects, planning events and my brand new laptop deciding to give up on life, I’ve been a bit irritable. On top of my constant state of annoyance, having to resort back to my old ancient laptop made it beyond difficult to blog, do any sort of homework or be productive in any real way.

Why is it when one bad thing happens it all snowballs into this giant pile of things you rather not deal with. Thankfully I’ve finally sorted everything out, figuratively and literally, and I’m back to my normal only slightly annoyed self.

Over the past few weeks it’s been a struggle to keep up with blogging. I luckily had some prewritten blog posts but as soon as I ran out of queued posts set to publish it became a bit hard to try to type a blog post on my cellphone. My lack of writing, failing to respond to all your lovely comments and being unable to share what I was publishing definitely hurt my blog, but no worries, everything is now fully functioning.

The past three weeks I visited Geek Squad four times to fix a problem on a laptop they had only recently sold me. During my last, and hopefully final visit, I sat waiting for the next person to give me more bad news and began jotting down all the people in my life that had one job, and still managed to screw it up. Now I get that there are bigger problems out there, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes a girl needs to vent.

This post was inspired by Best Buy, especially Geek Squad. After opening up my brand new laptop one day to realize it wasn’t turning on no matter what I tried, I frantically made my way to Geek Squad to figure out the problem. I cooperated fully and agreed to let them ship it across the country for a maximum of 15 days to fix the problem. Because it was a brand new laptop and the malfunction was in no way my fault, it was free of cost.

Fast forward three weeks later and I was still laptopless. Not only did they exceed their amount of time with the laptop, they shipped it to Minnesota (I live in Southern California), then couldn’t locate my correct zip code for days. As if the internet doesn’t exist!

After this fiasco I was just happy to have it back, but less than 30 seconds after turning it on I knew something was wrong. The movements were slow, the battery was not being recognized, everything was just wrong. Like any adult I immediately burst into tears of out frustration. I don’t have time to ship it back since I will be moving across the country in 6 days and need my laptop for my new job. Plus, the repairmen were clearly not competent to fix it or they would have the first time.

After 30 minutes on hold and talking/crying to half a dozen rude customer service reps, I finally was put in contact with someone who actually cared. The bad news was that because of company policy, a repair would cost me 200 dollars since apparently my battery warranty expired while they were servicing my laptop. With my move to a new city taking all my money, that wasn’t an option, so I basically broke down on the phone until he felt some sympathy.

Trip number 3. I was a ball of rage.

Thanks to the amazing man at my local Best Buy he broke policy and tried to figure out the problem in store. What was the problem? The idiot who serviced my laptop at the Geek Squad repair center unplugged all the wires inside my laptop and shipped it back to me, as if he did it completely on purpose because anyone with half a brain would know that was wrong!

After this and another incident with Geek Squad only two days later I’ve lost all trust in them. Any company that preys on people’s inability to fix a problem themselves is not going to get my money. During yet another trip to Best Buy I began jotting down the things in my life that drove me insane, from people who couldn't do a simple task or daily annoyances that drive me to the point of pulling my hair. Here is just a few of a never ending list...

» People who convince you to let them help you, only to bail last minute or claim they “forgot.”

» Typos. Especially on big websites where they should definitely take the extra minute to proofread. The announcement for my graduating class says “Class of 2011.” Umm, no one thought to double check the title?!

» Charging my phone to a full charge, then finding out it’s dead by 3 PM. How are you out of battery from just sitting in my purse?!

» Vending machines that gladly take your money but don't give you any credit. They are the reason I have trust issues.

» Being promised something over and over, only to come to expect that the person will have some lame excuse as to why it didn’t happen.