Post Office Tag

I ordered a couple of things off the internet last week; one was from inside Ontario, and I was pleasantly surprised to come home on Thursday to find a note on the door saying they'd tried to deliver. So I popped down to the Post Office on Saturday to pick it up. "Oh," she said. "It's not here" I pointed out that the note said it would be going to the branch on Thursday night. "Sometimes they don't come through then. Why don't you try in a couple of days?" I made it back again on Tuesday. "Oh," she said. "It's not here" I asked if she could tell me where it was, in that case. Her suggestion was to call the post office, who should be able to figure it out. So I did. "It's at the branch. It was signed for on Thursday evening. We'll investigate and see if we can figure it out" I tried again today, after getting another reminder through email. The first time, I was pleasantly surprised to be told that it was in the backroom, but she wouldn't let me have it without proof of address. The second time, she'd just gone on her smoking break, and wouldn't be back for twenty minutes. The third time, I actually got my parcel. But it did take her a good ten minutes to actually find it, including two or three trips back to the front desk to use the computer with an increasingly fretful look on her face. So it took five trips to the Post Office, and almost a week to get my parcel. And I still don't know where it's been for the last few days - I know someone's lying to me, but I don't know who.

I love my job

Monday, at 4:45; the boss wanders past. "Are you ready for the university course?" he asks. My response is, naturally, "What university course?" It seems that we're getting a new ticketing system to track customer issues and our progress on them. As part of this, the company that provides it have a large amount of information online to help train people. They're calling this their university, and there was a live training session on Monday night for the technical staff. Except that no one had bothered to mention it to me. After a little prodding, I found out that the company had bought ten licenses for the software, and allocated them to other people. And since I wasn't on the list, no one mentioned anything to me. I eventually got allocated a spare license - the system administrator left on Friday, so his became available. The boss seemed a little put out that I wasn't going to drop everything and take a 90 minute class on fifteen minutes notice when I had plans for the evening. But there was a second class today, and I said I'd make that. Monday and Wednesday are my gaming nights; I don't like missing either, but I will if it's required. I cancelled plans for Wednesday, which also involved not baking cookies, too. And, naturally, the course today was cancelled - it was almost an hour before it was due to start, which is rather more notice than I was expecting. Of course, my plans for the night were already cancelled, so that just made me quite grumpy. But it was nice to get a reminder that even though I've been there for six months, I'm not thought of as part of the team.

Phone fun

For the last week or so, I've been getting phone calls from, well, I don't actually know who.

It's clearly someone from abroad (and from here, that means "outside Canada"); there's that two-second long pause after you speak where you hear an echo of your voice, and before you can hear a reply. And the person at the other end doesn't speak English. He is, apparently, quite desperate to speak to someone, though I've yet to figure out just who, thanks to his inability to speak English, as well as the poor quality of the line.

I've told him that it's a wrong number (several times) and asked him not to call back (several times.) He quite clearly can't understand, what with him phoning every couple of hours. And I've no idea what language he speaks. I'm pretty sure that there was a phone call in the middle of last night, too - I remember waking up enough to hear the phone ringing, but not actually enough to get up and answer it.

I'm at a loss for what to do. I've just gotten off the phone with Rogers, who suggested I get call blocking - that will let me block the last number called. Except that having just tried it, I get a polite message saying that the last number called wasn't recognised. I assume that means he's using VOIP to call, which of course puts paid to Plan B (which involves picking up the call, and putting the receiver on the table while I get on with something else, hoping that his phone bill will bankrupt him.)

Any suggestions? At least, other than waiting for him to realise on his own that whoever he wants to speak to, they're not here.