On Telemarketers and Messing With Their Heads

[Another special post featuring Evil Drea]

Everyone hates telemarketers, right?  Not me.  I mean, I hate dealing with them, but as for the poor schmucks themselves, I always have this surge of pity for them.  If this is what they have to do for a living, well, let’s face it – their lives obviously suck worse than mine, right?  So who am I to judge?  I think I would honestly turn to prostitution first, personally.

Anyway, I got a call the other day from Janine of Safe Harbour Security.  She wanted to sell me a home security package.  Seemed like a nice enough girl.  But the thing is, and this I told to darling Janine, I work as an emergency dispatcher and while the company I work for mostly deals with the 911 system, we also offer our own alarm monitoring services.  So no offense, Janine, but if I get anyone to monitor my premises, it’s most likely going to be my own company.

This wasn’t enough for Janine.

I listened patiently for a while longer, but finally had to draw the line.  “I’m really sorry, but I’m just not interested.”

*silence*

Janine:  “Ugh…WHATEVER!”  *slam*

It was while I was sitting there staring at the phone, dumbfounded, that I noticed the applause.

Evil Drea was at my side, giving a standing ovation, whistling through her fingers and waving a placard that read, “10!”  (Some of you who have been following along know that ‘whatever’ happens to be, along with some choice four-letter expletives, one of Evil Drea’s most favouritest words in the whole wide world.)

Now, normally it requires duct tape and various other restraints to force me to step aside and let Evil Drea do her thing.  But then I remembered Janine’s tone of voice and with a gracious bow, I backed off and let Evil Drea have the floor.

This is the letter she wrote to Safe Harbour Security later that day:

Safe Harbour Security

ATT:  Manager of Call Centre Operations

Dear Sir/Madam:

I am taking a moment to write to you in order to offer praise for one of your employees with whom I had the pleasure of doing business today.  Her name is Janine.  Unfortunately, my call from this humble telephone service representative ended before I was able to extract further identification information from her, so it is my hope that you will be able to determine who I am referring to without too much difficulty.

You should give this girl a raise!  Rarely in my experience have I encountered such a pleasant and dedicated telemarketer.  She made my day!  Her empathy and eloquence stopped me in my tracks.  I can only hope that she serves as a role model for all of your other staff, as I know she has what it takes to go far.

I am now discussing the possibility of using your service with the rest of my household, all because of Janine!  I can only hope that I shall have further dealings with this lovely lady in the future.

Please ensure that she is made aware of my high level of satisfaction.  While I know that her karma will reward her in time for her good works, sometimes it is just nice to know that you are appreciated.

Have a great day!

Yours Truly,

[Evil] Drea M.

Some days, it just doesn’t take much to make me happy.

The Curse of the Ringbearer

Some of you already know that I wear one of those oh-so-millenium symbols of feminine independence, the right-hand ring.  It’s one of those ‘marry yourself first’ kind of things – it went on right after I gave my last serious live-in the boot and it pretty much never comes off.  It’s a reminder to be a little more cautious in the future about what kind of crap I put on that same finger on the other hand.  (Yeah, okay…and it’s pretty…)

But today I took it off to do dishes (okay – fine - I wasn’t doing dishes.  It was to measure my finger for some half-baked Facebook quiz a friend challenged me to.  Whatever.  Shut up.)  No biggie, I put it back on right afterwards and carried on with my day (which still didn’t include doing the dishes, sadly).

Imagine my reaction when I had that ’something’s not right here’ tingling – and looked down to see that I had somehow put the ring on the wrong hand!!  You may be having trouble picturing it.  Okay, try this:  Imagine the reaction I would be likely to have if I looked down and saw a seriously pissed-off tarantula about to take a slice of my finger for lunch.

Why this drama, you ask?  Why the slightly mental overreaction?  Let me illustrate.

I’ve been proposed to a lot.  This is not a boast.  It is case in point of the fact that I possess that je ne sais quoi that brings out the crazy in people.  These proposals have ranged in seriousness from the dude who threw himself down on one knee three seconds after being introduced to me – to the tool who showed up at my parents’ house in a suit and tie, requesting an audience with them to ask for my hand (result:  mom, wearing her Rolling Stones tongue logo t-shirt, secretly wishing she were a drinker; dad, not saying a word, but quietly chuckling away to himself the whole time.)

People probably think that the reason I haven’t gotten married yet is because I have commitment issues (not really), or because I value my freedom too much (possibly), or maybe I just haven’t met the right guy (could be).

But I believe the real reason is this:  Every time some guy sticks a ring on my finger, I get hurt!  I don’t mean emotionally – no, I mean full-on physical, literal HURT.  Like with blood.  I swear to god.   Here, I’ll show you…

Ring # 1:   4th grade (shut up – it still counts).  Royden…somebody.  I arrive at school one day and on my desk is a small brown box.  Inside – a ring (gold with a green stone), 29 cents in change and a note on a scrap of paper that says, “Just a little something.”  Cute, huh?  Yeah, sure.  Until I tried the thing on, and immediately developed a horrifying rash highlighted by the bright green circle it left around the afflicted digit.  Not cute.  Not at all.  Of course, setting a pattern for later stages of my life, I still let him take me to the movies.  (Okay, so not a lot of actual blood in this one, but hang tight – I’m just setting the stage here, people.)

Ring #2:  Age 28.  Fiancee #1.  We’d been together for 10 years.  I’d moved out and moved back in about five times that year.  Things weren’t going so great.  In a final act of desperation, during lunch one day he comes over and does the whole one-knee thing (which I just find really silly – and my first thought at the time was “Shouldn’t he know I would find that silly?”).  Now, you should know that if this had happened about 10 years earlier – hell, five years earlier – I would have been ecstatic.  When I was in my early twenties, I wanted nothing more than to marry this guy.  A classic case of too little, too late.  And I believe the actual proposal went something like, “If we work things out, would you consider marrying me?”  (At that moment, a tiny rift occurred in the fabric of space/time and my younger self, overhearing this, paused in her browsing of china patterns and proceeded to slit her wrists.)

ANYWAY – the ring.  It was silver (score – I hate gold).  It wasn’t a diamond (score – at the time, I hated anything so traditional.  I have since been enlightened.  Though I still only approve of fair-trade bling.)  It was wrought in the shape of a sun; a recurring theme in our relationship…partly because of a dream we once shared of starting our own theatre company in Jamaica and partly something to do with me being (yeah, I know) the centre of his universe or something (yes, I am aware that the sun is only the centre of a very small solar system, not the whole universe.)

It didn’t take long.  As it turned out, the sun shape had some very pointy bits.  Which proceeded to completely shred my fingers.  One day it got so bad, I ripped the damn thing off and threw it across the bedroom, where it was forgotten about until later that day when it embedded itself in the sole of my foot.

Ring #3:  A couple of years later.  Fiancee #2.  This time I picked out my own ring – a simple silver band with a small round amethyst set flush with the rest of the band.  Loved it.  Until the day I was being rushed out of the apartment by F2 and in going to turn off the light, the ring somehow got caught on the corner of the switchplate.  In some freak moment of ridiculousness, the momentum was just right to force the ring to open up at the seam where the ring had been re-sized (made smaller for me), pulling the ring, with its now raw metal edges, all the way up and off my finger, creating two long ragged gashes the entire length of it.  I still have the thing, actually, and it looks like it was hit by a train.  That wedding never happened, either, by the way.

Ring #4:   A few years after that.  Fiancee #3.  This one proposed on the second date, so a ring was not immediately produced.  Actually, this guy was bipolar and refusing medication, and was also an artist, so while there was big talk of the amazing ring he was going to design for me, and many intricate drawings made, no ring ever actually was produced.  So technically this ring never actually hurt me, but since he tried several times, I still feel it counts.

In any event, this is why I panic at the sight of any jewelry anywhere near that hand.  My friends find it kind of entertaining.

But you know, I might consider marriage…if I ever got a ring on that hand that didn’t try to kill me.  I’m not holding my breath, though.

Boys Make Me Stoopid

Okay, now that you’ve all seen through my running-away-to-join-the-circus ruse, do you want the real reason I’ve hardly been blogging lately?

It’s because my brains have been sucked out by a MAN!  (By the way, if that sounds even remotely sexy to you, you’re a big pervert and should seek immediate solace in the knowledge that it must have sounded that way to me, too, since I mentioned it…okay, never mind.  Where was I?)

It’s true, though.  I’m turning into a frickin’ Disney animation.  Actually, he said it best the other day:  “I’m just a big mess of wanting to kiss you all the time.”  Or something to that effect.  My short-term memory is shot, too.

I mean, I just bought a laptop computer.  When they said, “What colour do you want, black or pink?”  I was all ready with my answer – black, of course.  Jeez, what do I look like?  Some kind of girly-girl?  Cripes.

Yeah.  So I am now the proud owner of a pink laptop computer.  Fuck.

And shoes – I’m out of control about the shoes…the voices in my head are having a field day:  “Oooooo, wouldn’t he like those!”

I’ve been gazing out the window a lot.  Smiling like the village idiot.  Which is now apparently me.

And staying up too late.

But not blogging so much.  No, not really.  And even now, I’m not focusing on this.    No.  I am thinking about how cute he is.  Pathetic.

And you know what?  He’s even making me face the evil voice mail lady on a regular basis.  It’s disgusting.  (But you’ve probably already guessed that if you leave a message and you’re not him, I probably won’t be getting back to you anytime soon.  I’m too busy thinking about rainbows and bunnies or some warm, fuzzy crap like that.   I haven’t been returning emails very well, either.)

But if you’re reading this, Shug (you know who you are), well…never mind.  I forget what I was gonna say.  *sigh*

The Big Confession

Some of you have probably been wondering why I haven’t been blogging much these days.

Well, here’s the thing.

I have been suffering from wanderlust and have been searching for a way to shake up my world a bit, and after exhaustive research, I have finally found a way to combine my love of theatrics with my daredevil tendencies.

I have run away and joined the circus.

That’s right.  I have been training in secret for the past three weeks.  In fact, my boss doesn’t even know about it – so if you’re reading this, Yvonne…SURPRISE! And we leave next week for a cross-continent tour of North America, where I will be performing on the flying trapeze, as well as providing makeup art and costume design for the troupe.

I’m very excited and encourage you all to take a quick look at our site (and get a look at me in my cute little butt-twitcher of an outfit) here.