Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A rather trying day

Betty has decided she doesn't like first gear.

However her dislike of that gear pales into latte froth when compared to her newly-found hatred of reverse. I had to sit in the car park outside PC World for some time until the car in front of me moved so I could drive straight out.

And why was I in PC World? I know you're longing to know.

Our printer in the office has been playing up for months. Well, since we had it back in January actually but we kept putting it down to teething troubles until it got beyond a joke. Then Alun took it back to the shop. That was about two months ago. They kept it (or sent it away they said) and forgot to return it until we nagged them. When we eventually got it back it came without its little plastic cover bit - but that didn't really matter. What did matter was that it still wasn't working properly.

At first it was moderately well-behaved but it soon showed its true colours - and they weren't orange. I started nagging Alun to take it back; he kept phoning them instead.

This afternoon I decided it needed an angry woman to deal with them so I returned it (which is when I discovered that Betty had taken this dislike to various gears).
{Why is it Bette (Bet) Midler but Bette (Betty) Davis?}

This was after I had tried to print one full sheet of writing. The top and bottom lines were printed but nothing in-between. And they were printed 9 times (that was before I pulled the plug on it as it refused to listen to any of my Cancel instructions) in between 9 blank sheets.

On restart I tried to print something different: the printer decided to routinely maintain itself. And continued to maintain itself for 15 minutes. When I tried to push the off switch, it said, 'Maintenance cannot be interrupted'. Memories of Hal and Space Odyssey.

It was a pretty mad woman who marched into PC World and then stood and waited for 10 minutes to be seen to. I explained the problem to an assistant who disappeared, promising to return straightaway. Five minutes later he came back with the manager. He wanted to check the machine so he disappeared for ten minutes. He briefly appeared and said, 'won't be a minute,' before disappearing for another five.

They will exchange it for me but only when I bring in the disc and the cable. 'Will you be back this afternoon?' he asked.
'No, I flipping will not. I will be lucky if I get home this afternoon let alone anywhere else.'

Then guess what was waiting for me when I arrived home? Yes, a rejection letter.

There is only way to deal with a day like this. Eat half a packet of chocolate biscuits.

3 comments:

Clare said...

ohhhh I HATE PC WORLD!!!! They are the biggest bunch of you-know-what's in all of the UK. Every person that works there has had a vital brain cell removed and can only operate very slowly. It makes me so angry I rarely visit - I normally send Phil! Argh, they're horrible people.
End of rant.
Sorry you had a bad day, hope you're feeling better and the chocolate biscuits did the trick! xx

Elsie said...

Don't you hate when you have "one of those days?" Enjoy the biscuits! Everything is better with a cookie.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Liz. I totally sympathise! My printer drives me crazy and uses up so much paper on its self-announced "test runs". Sorry about the rejection letter, too. Hope you enjoyed the biscuits, though.