Are you KIDDING me???

With this post I must revise my earlier comment about this being purely for entertainment and issue a DART to a specific company. Poor service is one thing; compound that with a business owner trying to play armchair psychologist to claim he and I are together fighting against the world and you hit my hottest hot button. DO NOT ATTEMPT MANIPULATION–IT’S OBVIOUS AND IS THE ONE THING THAT CAUSES MY CALM-IN-THE-STORM TO VAPORIZE IN A BOLT OF LIGHTNING.

So the owner of First Choice movers apologized too profusely for his scheduling screw up yesterday. Today he slated handling my move at the end of my work day so I’d only miss one hour work, but we’d still get it done in daylight. At 3:45pm I scurried away from my busy desk at work to be ready for the truck to arrive. This time, I handled my follow up in a different order. FIRST I posted on Facebook my guess that they would not arrive in reasonable time, then at 4:10pm I called the owner, Austin. He assured me they were on the way. Ten minutes later the driver called. He was on HWY 217!! I pointed out that he was to have been at my house at 4pm and he assured me he was only minutes away.

“No you are NOT minutes away. I have driven that road at this hour of the day and I guarantee you won’t be here before 5pm.” I instructed him that I was going back to work and he should call me when he got to the city limits.

I called Austin to report that his team wasn’t remotely close to my house. He cursed on the phone and questioned what the world is coming to and how people like he and I just end up fight, fight, fighting this nonsense all the time. He was cursing about the driver taking a longer route and wasting his gas and the injustice of what his driver was doing to us. I had to interrupt him and remind him that these are HIS employees and as the employer, HE needed to knock off the complaining at the customer and get a solution in place. I also reminded him that I was in the process of losing a valuable hour of work because of their inattentiveness. His you-and-me-against-the-world portrayal fried my last nerve. No sir, it’s not you and me.

I left work at 5pm. My cell phone had been silent the whole time. Once home I called Austin again. He asked if I got his really long text message–no I didn’t. He went on to say what a marvelous letter he had written me to apologize for all the BS. I had to again remind him, the apology is appreciated, but him getting HIS business and HIS employees together and getting the job done is MORE appreciated.

He then told me he was heading out the door meet up with those drivers as somehow they stalled the truck in the middle of Baseline and it was blocking traffic.

At 6:03pm Austin called (finally trained him in following up!) That truck is no longer obstructing traffic and the guys are supposedly about 15 minutes away….let’s call it 30 minutes given it’s likely neither has had dinner. He said he just wanted to be sure I knew I wasn’t alone–he was right there panicking with me. Seriously? Are you KIDDING me?

The universe has many big questions, mine are small:

First, when the truck breaks down, why not grab a different crew and truck to help me while you fix your problem?

Second, how does a business owner who disowns his problems stay in business?

And the one question sizing up the whole event: Are you KIDDING me?