I'm grumpy irritable and not every comfortable.

Two courses of antibiotics back to back have lead to the necessity to buy something else at that drug store.

Once upon a time that something was prescription and I'd have paid $10 - now thanks to them delisting it I get to pay just under $20.

Ain't life grand.

Oh and friday I bought some "premium" milk at the grocery store. Open it friday night and put it in my tea and the tea tastes weird.. no separating or floaties or anything but .. oooooo-weeeeeeeee does the milk smell sour.

Second time in a month same brand name milk from same store goes bad quickly or immediately.

Monday I tried to pricematch and use coupons at walmart. The "cashier police" stopped me from doing that as that's one deal on top of another .. and once can't do that. Since I've done this many times at Walmart I let them reverse the items (all 9 boxes of cling wrap) and just bought the other items I wanted.

I didn't feel like waiting around for a manager and the supervisor (err.. other employee?) had backed up the cashier's statement.

So when I came home I sent walmart an email asking for clarification of policy.

Today ... manager at walmart called. Assured me the cashier was wrong and i was right .. and that they have been SPOKEN TO (uh huh). One can use coupons on price matched items.

So I asked if I could come by tonight and do it with no problem - he assured me I could and I have the name of the manager and the assistant working tonight.

My guess is that emails to head office get logged and the manager gets a black mark for them and a really big black mark if I have to write another email tonight. He assured me that I should phone him if I run into any other issues and he'll handle it "quicker than head office".

Still he was very nice and I did get his phone number.. just in case. I'm keeping that number.

So on the way home I go there and get my cling wrap.

Got to the cash, not a bad line up.. only two in front of me though dyno-boy on cash is straightening the baby clothes on the hangers before he takes them off of the hangers (it was interesting to watch...). Anyways the customer service manager - hey it said so on her tag- came over and took over cash. She assured me no problem about the price matching and coupons. Totally not an issue.

I smile and hand her over the 9 coupons I had - I bought nine boxes of cling wrap (price match for $1 and $1 off coupon .. the sort of deal one gets to like).

And of course you know what happened then don't you?

Yup she tried to tell me that it is one per purchase (you KNEW that was coming didn't you??). So I tell her yup, 9 coupons, I'm purchasing 9 items what's the problem. She looked dubious and she paged someone. I said, well if you want you can do it in 9 transactions. She didn't like that answer much. (and yes I'd have used my debit card for each transaction *grins*). Finally she gets an answer but not before she suspends my transaction and has dyno boy start on the next order.

Luckily for her she didn't end up up having to do 9 transactions for me as someone on the other end of the phone authorized her doing them on one bill. She took me to the cash at customer service so I'd not have to wait any longer. She was very pleasant but .. come on .. shouldn't a customer service manager know policy?

Never mind .. that last question was rhetorical

Gawd saving money is hard work.

Yvonne

I went to my bank for the second time in a week today. Again no line up. Weird. Twice in one week I'm either first in line for a teller or a wicket is open and they are waiting for me.

Banks are going to lose their reputation as large uncaring, unfriendly institutions if they keep this up.

Okay .. so the bank machine decided not to recognize my pin.. and then when i got that reset I found they forgot to hook up my checking account to the bank card. So there is no worry they are efficient and provide top notch service.. its just they are friendly and have less line ups.

Opened a large bag of shredded cheddar from a small local dairy/cheese place. Was going to sprinkle some on my chilli until I tasted it and found it tasted more like a cross between feta and blue cheese than cheddar.

Needless to say I had the chili without any cheese...

Found the number of the company and called them. I think its a relatively small family business. They called me back and I finally got them today.

I'll get a refund most likely but they are going to send a sales rep to pick up the product as they want to find out what happened to it.

Oh fun -- told them to drop by one morning next week. Time to remove the trapeze from over the coffee table (kidding) - seriously my living and kitchen need a slight sprucing up before anyone visits... Guess what I am doing this weekend...

I went to Walmart last week. Had a number of things to pick up and decided I'd brave Walmart, even though I'd normally avoid it, as it would be one stop shopping for everything I needed. Cold weather means one sometimes organizes shopping trips by number of stops and availability of underground parking (this walmart has parking underneath as well as around it)

Other than the mother teaching her child to scream "woo hoo" cause the Mom thought it was "cute" and the toddler I found in the aisle with no parent it sight (yes I stuck around til a parent showed up).. the visit wasn't too bad .. found some good deals; the best being some clearance undies (2 pairs of underwear for 25c) and some nice tops for $4 each. I love good deals like this.

Of course I didn't get the thing for my bathtub I wanted. I looked in bathroom stuff and in the organizing areas and didn't find the expandable "fit to size" pole thingy that sits in the corner of the tub and has shelves for stuff that would otherwise clutter up the rim of the bathtub. A friend told me that I should have looked the hardware and plumbing area for this. Oh well next time I go there or a similar store... but how it rates up there with a toilets, gasket seals, and fixtures is beyond me. To me it should be in the organizing stuff or bathroom stuff but no one asked me...

Got to the cash register. A nice cashier. No issues at all. Not even a price check needed. Woo hoo .. bonus.......Go home put bags down and ignore them for two days. Okay so I needed the stuff but not right that evening. And once put off.. well you know how it goes....Don't tell me I'm the only one that's done this...

Go to open one of the bags and find this treasure trove of stuff I wasn't charged for. Obviously once opening it was bought by someone very concerned with dental hygiene. 2 small bottles of Listerine, Aquafresh toothpaste, Colgate Max, and two kids toothpastes. None of this stuff is on my bill (and my bill was actually in this bag I think so I'm not sure what happened).

I'll likely use the Listerine and give away or send to the food bank (they'll take toiletries as this will save people money that they can use on food) the other items as I don't use any of those brands.

The odds are this is karma balancing out the stuff I swear I bought that never made it home...

First dealing I had with them was when my mom died. She had some insurance with them. I guess there are two parts to sending a beneficiary cheque.

Step 1: Add beneficiary to mailing list to sell insurance to

Step 2: Send cheque and advertising crap to beneficiary.

They called tonight to sell me something. A breakthrough in insurance (yeah yeah.. something with low payout high profit I'm sure)....

I interupted to rant about how they used sending me a beneficiary cheque as an excuse to put me on their maililng list.

The best? They hung up on me!

Walk in. As I pass the cash area I hear two girls say hello to me (or should I say to my back. as I had passed them).. Okay whatever.

Go look at that camera I'm interested in.

Two clerks at the counter.. one girl looking at a camera at another part of the counter.

Stand there for 5 minutes trying to get camera to work. Clerk looks my way. I ask him why it isn't turning on.

He gives me this look and in the voice you'd use to talk to a retarded 3 year old he says "oh that camera uses batteries, we don't have it plugged in".

I looked at him and left.

The girl this time facing me said goodbye. I looked at her and kept walking.

Wow a digital camera that uses batteries. How surprising. Amazing how all the other more expensive cameras can be plugged in so we can try them.

It will be a while til I shop there (or best buy - they are the same company) again.

The good news is that a friend is picking up the camera for me for around $100. The price at future shop for this model was $200.

Got my car back from Crappy tire. I dropped it off Sunday. The very bright mechanic said "oh I paged you in the store today when it was finished.

I just looked at him and said "I dropped it off Sunday and while I like roving around in the store its now thursday; I don't like your store that much. After a second he got it. If he worked on my car I'm a bit scared.

Cost just under $700. But I got a freebie - A pair of travel mugs and 1.50 in Crappy Tire money.

Got a new modem but can't get through to technical support. A 20 minute hold is what they WARN you of - which to my mind means more likely it will be an hour or more. Seems their registration server is down.

I think I'm asking for another credit.

*sigh*.

I'd really prefer to have the services I want with them.

In my paper purging today I have found a number of cheques (totalling about $12 .. a number of free product coupons (at least 3 all still good) and some uncancelled and some unused stamps..

Oh and a $10 bill

Who says purging is a bad thing? I'm finding it nicely lucerative!

Got my home phone service back and i think they got the physical line fixed. The phone now works nicely - and am getting better lines than i did before.

Spent endless hours on hold (if I'm so freaking important to you hire more customer service and tech support staff) they decided it was my modem that went. Why? Cause its old. Strange it worked before. So using dial up til i get that.

I owned that modem. They are sending me a new one if I send them back the old one. I don't get it. (Is the new one mine to keep?)
but i'll wait to question until I get the new one and then ask! I'm not too fussed about sending them the old one.. I think I got it in 1999 or 2000 - so not likes it hasn't served me well!

In the process of switching to a new home phone provider it seems I've lost both my phone and internet services. As I'm one of the last in the civilized world without a cell phone this leaves me with way to contact my 75 year old father or to get in touch with emergency services should I need them.

Lots of fruitless calls to the "customer care" centre. They should call it the "holds and plattitudes centre" as they do more of that than helping.

A supervisor is looking into it today for me.

I've told her I'm not impressed by the "seamless transition" their promotional material promised.

Damn Primus who i have my interent with now. I have had great service so i'm moving my home phone to them. To promptly get my dsl cut off while they make the transfer

"sorry lady it takes a week"

&Y#$# @#$#

Yeah right...

Its gonna be a long week

The sales guy assured me they'd be no issues and my service would not be down. The tech and customer support jail that does not allow you out of it to real people assure me I should have been told this and it is 100% necessary and unavoidable.

I so feel like a loved and cherished customer

On friday night I dropped my laptop computer. Visions of replacement and using it as a door stop danced in my head. Yes it was on when it was dropped.

I brought it to a friend to look at on Saturday morning but alas that didn't work out as he didn't get a chance to look at it.

Saturday night I looked online for information on how to get a recovery disk (I couldn't find one in my computer stuff). But I found this exciting thing.

Turned my computer on, hit F10 and voila a brand new computer that worked. Yup. It completely reformatted my drive and put it back to factory specs within a 1/2 hour.

Annoying cause I lost a lot of programs but I'm not a big downloader so it wasn't a huge issue that way.

The relief in not having to buy a new computer or spend $$$ getting it fixed - huge. I had visions of really having some large expenses.

I got told on June 18th that I was getting a letter regarding my attitude and how I had to shape it up during the next 90 days or start thinking about a new job.

My boss was told by his boss who was told by his boss tht my attitude sucks. I have mega attitude and I did tell someone my opinion and they didn't want to hear it. Lesson learned yummy - shut up.

Anyways. It is now approximately 9 weeks later. No letter. My boss said that he thinks it might never show up. Last he knew he had brought the draft letter to HR. HR had issues about the letter being not specific enough and not giving the type of feedback one needs to address the issue. His boss had a meeting with HR to discuss it that never as far as I know happened.

Boss asked me if I wanted this followed up on. My answer was no. Why remind anyone its not done. I'm going to wait until Sept 18th and figure by then its pretty much dead - that being three month's after I was told about it.

Until then I am careful on adding to the Gross National Product by buying things.

Oh and the Sr Director was in today. I had two meetings with him where I got lots of new exciting projects.

My advice... if you are gonna do stupid stuff don't do it to people who have political connections and bitch to the very senior uppper management folks.