As most of you probably know almost 9 months ago my wife and I moved to Illinois for her job. I gave up my very cushy, well paid job to support her new career path. While not optimal, it wasn't a very hard choice because Stephanie is worth more to me than I can possibly explain and I want her to be happy. I would do it again in a heart beat. However, having said that, I feel I must go on the record stating that I LOATHE the area where we live and if I weren't getting old I'd probably drink my way through our time here. However, drinking doesn't hold the appeal it once did and I'm getting to the point where my body actually requires some time to recuperate from the excesses I subject it to! The people here are fat, lazy and feel entitled. The world OWES them something for simply existing. They have some of the highest taxes in America to support some of the most inefficient, bloated bureaucracy I've ever seen that supplies substandard goods and services while giving the impression that they are doing you a huge favor by doing their jobs however poorly!
Let the saga of my week begin. Stephanie and I went to Outback Steakhouse saturday and on our way there I got a flat tire, thanks to the incredibly bad roads here; a chunk of rusty metal slit my tire open as I was turning into the Outback parking lot. Then, as I'm changing my tire in the parking lot some fat bastard just has to park in the spot beside me where I'm changing the tire because he can't walk 5 extra feet to the door. I gather my stuff up give him the "are you fucking kidding me" stare and slide closer to my vehicle to finish changing my tire. But hey, we're at Outback and I'm going to have a good steak with my wonderful wife so I brush off the typical ire I feel when dealing with anyone from this area. I finish changing my tire and proceed to enjoy my evening. We get home and I look up tire stores in the area of which there are 7 within a mile... yes, the roads suck that much that they can support 7 tire stores in this tiny town. I find that only one carries the brand I want and it is closed on sunday. No worries, monday is soon enough. Being a planner, I plan it all out, I'll get new tires, go grocery shopping, pick up a prescription, get my allergy shot and scoot on home to greet my wife when she gets home from work!
Monday rolls around and I head out to the tire store around 8:30 am. I get there wait in line for about 10 mins, there were 6 people in front of me, I ask for the tires I want and find out that they are in the local warehouse and they only go pick up tires once a day and I just missed the daily run which goes at 8am. Ok, that's mildly annoying but whatever... there are snow flurries coming down outside so I opt to postpone all my errands til tuesday since I don't want to drive around on my spare in that weather on the crappy roads that already flattened my real tire and the instructions for the spare state "Do not hit pot holes" which basically means don't drive in Illinois. The guy at the tire store took my flat so they could get a head start on changing it as soon as the tires came in the next morning and promised me that he'd have me out of there by 10:30am the next morning at the latest. Ok, cool.
Tuesday arrives and I screw around on Facebook, watch TV, eat breakfast, read some of my book, screw around on Facebook some more... 11:33am I call the tire store and ask if they had my tires in from the warehouse yet and the guy says "yeah, we've had them here for a couple hours now but haven't gotten around to checking them into inventory yet". When I asked if they were going to do that anytime soon since I was waiting on them so I could run some errands he got mad and said he guessed they could do that if I wanted to come on into the store. He sounded put upon... because I asked him TO DO HIS JOB even though he was already an hour past his promised time. I go in, it takes them roughly 45 mins to get the tires changed and they completely put the spare back wrong but whatever, I was free to run errands! I couldn't get my allergy shot this week since they are closed tuesday and friday and I had to wait for a treadmill to be delivered wednesday and thursday and because of the tire I couldn't make it on monday. But again, no worries, I'll go home for lunch to see my wife then finish the rest of my errands.
Time with Stephanie is a bit limited because she works 14 hrs a day, 5 days a week right now and she goes to bed early most nights. I get up with her at 3am in the mornings so I can spend time with her before she goes to work and I try to be home when she gets here for lunch because she usually just eats dinner and goes to bed after work. Not a lot I can do to support her with this except keep the house clean, stocked with food and pick up after her Royal Messiness, Princess Stephanie the First! That and offer her my constant love and support. Because of this I'm a bit miffed that I missed half of her lunch break, but I digress.
Steph heads back to work, I go fix my spare tire and head off to the pharmacy! After waiting 20 mins when they said "have a seat it'll take about 15mins" they inform me that I can't have my prescription filled until the next day because I should still have a some doses left on my last one. Seriously, I'm 1 day too early? Yes, seriously... ok, fine, off to the grocery store then! I like grocery shopping and we have one grocery store that reminds me of the ones in Arizona so I drive a few extra miles to go to it for my groceries. I mosey, yes indeed, I MOSEY, around the grocery store for roughly an hour shopping and browsing, seeing if there is anything I might want to experiment with or if there are any new items that Steph might like since she is a sucker for anything "new". I bought the usual stuff for the most part but instead of canned sodas I bought 6-pack bottled sodas because they were on sale. I get to the checkout and I politely ask the lady to bag my soda so I wouldn't have to make more than one trip up the stairs once I got home. She looks me dead in the eye and states "we don't usually bag soda" and makes no move to bag my sodas. To which I reply with barely suppressed anger, "You can either bag my soda or put all of these groceries back on the shelves and lose my business forever". Then it was "Oh, what I meant was we don't usually bag soda but of course we'd be glad to bag them for you"... of course you would, have any swampland for sale while I'm here?
Now here it is thursday, and I just found out that the treadmill mentioned earlier, that I've been waiting the last 2 days on, that was supposed to be here last wednesday or thursday but wasn't because of a shipping error, isn't coming until March 8th-10th now! And no, no one called me either time to tell me these things, I had to call and ask where it was both times. This time when I found out it still wasn't here I told the Sears representative I wanted to cancel my order because this was the 2nd time Sears had had a problem delivering a treadmill on the day said they would, they had the same problem 5 years ago with our first treadmill! You know what the lady told me? Yep, you guessed it! "I'm sorry I can't cancel that order for you since it's been shipped, you'll have to refuse shipping and when it gets back to the supplier you can contact us for a refund then". Basically, Sears gets to keep $2100 of my money for MONTHS making interest on it for having shitty service OR I can just suck it up and accept the treadmill whenever they decide to actually deliver it to avoid the hassle! You know what the worst part of this is? I'm the one that convinced Stephanie to give Sears another chance because she was still pissed about the first one and now I look like a dumb ass for having believed them.
To top today off and spur my rant here. I called my allergist today and asked to have them move my injections from their office to the office of my general practitioner because it's closer and I'm a bit dissatisfied with the injection nurse at my allergist. THEY are the ones that asked if I wanted my injections at their office or my doctors office when I first started going there and do you know what the receptionist told me when I decided to take them up on that offer today? "Before we can do that, you need to contact your doctors office and see if they will provide that service for you". Why would you offer me an option when you don't even know if it's available and aren't willing to find out for me after YOU offered?
I seriously loathe this place and if I didn't have the most wonderful wife in the entire world there would be no way in the 9 circles of Hell that I'd live here! This state is the epitome of my worst fears about the possible future of the United States and our President helped this state become what it is today! Alas, I do have the most wonderful wife in the whole world and if hanging out in my personal version of Hell is what it takes to make her happy it's well worth it! Ok, I feel better now. I shouldn't need to whine again like this for at least another few months!
o.O
