border patrol 

every other hour or so i'm reminded as to why i left this town the first time and why i haven't been back for any extended period of time in the last ten years. every grocery store in town closes by 9. 8 on sundays. what happens at 11pm when i'm hit with a sudden craving for something that's not in the kitchen? i suffer through til the next day. the restaurants are barely worthy of 1/8 a star on a 5 star scale. entertainment options are limited if not non-existent. and then there's the customer service....

sometime ago, i sent a western union to a friend of mine that needed a small amount of cash. now an act like this shouldn't be relevant enough for a blog post but here in hickville nothing is as simple as it should be. it took a couple of days longer than it should have for two reasons. the first being the ungodly hour at which everything in town closes. the second being that they don't "do" western unions on sunday. i'm thinking this might be because you might be sending someone beer money and buying beer on sunday???? well that's just not allowed.

the following monday i make my third trip to the W/U office and am greeted by the polite and cheerful betty lou. i hand her the form i filled out the day before. she takes it and the smile fades. "you're sending this to canada?" judging from the tone in her voice you'd have thought i'd requested a transfer to mars. "yes, that's right. canada." i try to keep a positive outlook but it's hard. i've seen the look on her face too many times to be able to convince myself that everything's going to go smoothly.

betty lou types away...or rather hunts and pecks away then stops short. "this doesn't look right. i'm going to try it again." and she does. 5 more times to be exact. all the time babbling away about how different all the screens look and how she wants to be extra careful so there aren't any mistakes. i smile pleasantly and nod the whole time, willing the muscles in my face to be still. pushing the urge to scream at her to get the hell out of the way and let me do it myself back into a dark crainial corner. she must have noticed my struggle to remain composed b/c she it was right about this time she called for back up. it was a wasted call. she starts back over for the 6th time and then the words that removed the trying to be patient smile from my face..."i don't get it. i put in canada on the receiving screen but when i type in your address it changes to USA." no fucking kidding. last time i checked, canada was a good 1000 miles from here. mexico roughly 900. while i didn't major in geography, i know enough to know that the big mass of land between canada and mexico is the USA. betty lou obviously didn't fare as well in geography.

my eyes were just about to make a nose dive onto the counter, when a man dressed in casual business attire walked up and saved betty lou from the evil W/U computer with all it's geographical knowledge. he scans the screen quickly, asks a couple of mundane questions that i tuned out, and hits the send button. oh joy!!! i can leave!!! i grab my receipt from betty lou without bothering to thank her and all but sprint to my car. once i'm a safe distance from the w/u office i take a look at the receipt. don't you know it was fucked up. she didn't send it to vacouver as i'd clearly written on the form and even verbally spelled for her more than once. nope. she'd sent it to vanatau, which i believe is an island in the south pacific.
at the time, i'd hoped that maybe just maybe it was some small frozen tundra community in canada. when my phone rang that evening with my friend reporting the "fun" time she'd had at the canadian w/u office, i knew that indeed it wasn't.

bright and earlier the next day, i called the 800 number on the back of my receipt in the hopes that i wouldn't have to go visit betty lou yet again. the planets must have realigned in the night b/c the employees at the w/u call bank were indeed able to help and not make the angry, bitter, slightly worse than evil chewy crawl out from the dark cranial corner where she hibernates.

number of days it takes to almost send a W/U in hickville:3+
number of days minutes it takes the call bank to correctly send a W/U originating from hickville: 5

i should have just called them in the first place.  ¶ 8:28 PM 0 comments |