jane q. public

You could fill volumes with complaints against Comcast.  Hell, my boss has devoted staff meetings to telling us of his terrible dealings with Comcast to illustrate customer service “Don’ts” to us.

I’ve just got a small complaint tonight…

I need to have the home phone service disconnected.  I don’t need it and I never did, but I used to have two roommates without cell phones, so we added it (how it’s fair that I spent a year paying a third of the bill for phone service I didn’t need or use, I don’t know).  Now the roommates are gone (well, the last one will be at the end of the week … I hope), and so I need it turned off.  Plus, I need to save the money like whoa.

I go to their website to look up contact info because 1-800-COMCAST is far too much information for me to maintain in my little head, and I see this:

Oh good!  That means I can get this business taken care of now, which is great since it’s Sunday evening and I’m not doing anything.

But oh no.  According to the robot lady, their hours have changed – they are no longer open on Sundays and their Monday through Friday hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Ok, so it’s not a big deal and I’m wasting time bitching about it.  I also suspect that this change in their hours of operation is 100% related to this recession, which sucks for their call center employees.

In fact, if that’s the worst problem I have with Comcast (given their track record) all year, I’m in good shape.

All I’m saying is, you’re a company that deals in communications.  Update your freaking website, Assclowns, and don’t give me the unrealistic expectation of receiving help.

Oh my gosh, this is dumb and I’m just really bored.

I am broke.  I have exactly enough money to pay my bills (thanks to the awesome power of a budget – it works – who knew?), and that’s it.

I have also lost 20+ pounds in the last couple of months and all of my pants are falling off and look ridiculous.  Clearly, I need some pants, but I meant what I said about the money; I can’t even afford Goodwill right now.

Furthermore, even if I had a little cash, I really wouldn’t want to blow it on clothes just yet, as I have 20 more pounds to go.  So in a month, I’d just be in the same boat again.

But it hit me – I can go on a shopping spree.  I was skinny about four years ago.  I bought A LOT of clothes.  I was living with my mom at the time, so I could blow my paycheck on whatever I wanted, and I did.  I even amassed a collection of jeans which, I believe, totaled 13 pairs.

I’m a bit of a packrat, so after I gained a ton of weight (thanks, beer!), I kept telling myself that I would one day be thin again and needed to keep my skinny clothes.  I spent a lot of time wondering if that would ever happen, but it seems that I made the right choice.

Since our economy is in the toilet, you always hear the anchorpeople talking about “going shopping in your closet” – I’m headed over to mom’s house this afternoon to go shopping in her attic (or as I like to call it, “my own personal storage facility”).  All of those old clothes are in boxes there, probably labeled “skinny clothes.”

I’m actually pretty excited since there are probably a lot of clothes that I completely forgot.  I doubt that I’ll be able to get into most of the jeans quite yet, but at the rate I’ve been going, I should be -20 pounds in about a month, so I want them ready.

Anyway, that’s my method of coping with this recession for this afternoon.  Happy Sunday!

Braisted posted a video that made my day and you should go see it.  Of all of the people in that video, I got all excited because Darryl from The Office was in it.

From an e-mail at work:

One simple question
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor, The Nation