I can't believe it's going to be 30 years in July since Billy Squier released his album "Emotions in Motion." I was a huge fan of Billy's back in those days, mostly because I liked his music, but also because the guy was pretty damn cute. Feel free to snort your coffee, guffaw or just outright giggle at me. I stand by my choice - it was as close to hair band-lust as I ever got in the 80s. Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Dokken, Poison, etc. just never blew up my skirt.
I chose to title today's post "Emotions in Motion" for a completely different reason, however. This past Saturday, I had an emotional outburst on Facebook that so shames me, I feel the need to spill my guts. Here's why:
Everyone I know (and likely millions of people I don't) has an infuriating story or two about their dealings with their cable TV/satellite/Internet/phone provider. I had my share when I lived in New York, and sadly, those experiences have crossed the border with me. My service provider here in Toronto is Rogers Communications, which, unfortunately, is even more of an evil empire than my former favourite target: Cablevision.
I had a horrific run-in with Rogers over a billing/payment SNAFU that was clearly not my fault, and despite "the customer's always right" edict you would expect to get from a company raking in billions (yeah, right), I received zero satisfaction. Said SNAFU ended up costing me a good bit of time, plus extra money this month to straighten out the incompetence of a Rogers' employee, which is not how I expected the situation to resolve itself. In my high emotional state, I took to my Facebook page and wrote a short diatribe about how if I had access to automatic weaponry, I would have "gone postal" in my local Rogers store, where the SNAFU occurred. I left the post up on my page for about 10 minutes before I re-read it and promptly deleted it. In this world of electronic instant gratification, not to mention the fact that you never know who or what is watching your every move online, I felt such a degree of mortification at what I did, I still can't get past it more than 48 hours later. Yeah, I didn't post naked pictures of myself or anything equally as compromising, but implying that I wanted to "go postal" in a public place is not exactly a smart move, either.
At the beginning of the month I posted about drowning in ineptitude. I had a sense of humour about it on that particular day, but on Saturday, my sense of humour took the day off. I was incensed; infuriated; angry as a hornet that just got kicked out of the nest. It makes no sense to me why what we have come to rely upon as basic services, have to be so difficult to procure and maintain. Using a mobile phone, and having cable television and Internet access are things we rely upon in our daily lives; unless of course we want to engage in Neo-Luddism and pitch every electronic device we own. Unfortunately, my livelihood prohibits such a move, unless I decide I want to join a Mennonite colony and become a full-time quilter. I should mention I'm not very proficient with a needle and thread with the exception of having to sew on the occasional button. So, I have no choice but to put up with the abuse from an entity like Rogers Communications, which could give a toss about how it treats its customers, and laughs all the way to the bank. And that pisses me off.
Still, regardless of my degree of "pissed-offitiude" I have to suck it up and endure the shitty treatment. The only other choice would be Bell Canada, and the services I need are not available where I live. So, in effect, Rogers is not only the evil empire, they are the only game in town for me. And that gets my emotions in motion.
The lesson I learned from this is to keep my emotions to myself. The last thing I need is for anyone to think I am truly capable of such a heinous act. The only thing I can do is hope that the bastards get what they deserve. And that goes for many more outfits than just Rogers.
Nava
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