Flares

Seems like a suitable photograph for a day that offers an EXTREME HEAT WARNING.

It wasn’t just the weather warming up today, though.

Retiring from a customer contact job removed a great deal of stress from my life. A substitute was soon found when I began fostering cats, though that was a different sort of anxiety.

Eventually, I was obliged to give it up. It’s the sort of thing that should be done properly or not at all. After a few years, I had in my care a large number of cats that for various reasons were never going to be adopted. I had accepted responsibility for them and was totally committed to it, but my resources were dwindling.

So, I sold the property and moved to my place in the country where life has been quite a bit more peaceful.

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There were a few initial challenges. Aren’t there always in a new home? The greatest, for me, was finding what I jokingly called a new medical team.

It isn’t easy, when you are old and have physical issues. In the middle of that transition, there were a couple of minor crises that landed me in hospital. The first one involved emergency surgery which was painful, but not dreadful. My real problem was with my room mate and with the utter bedlam I found myself in.

That, I think, was the last time I lost my temper, so it has been 5 years since I blew my stack. Though I would have to check just when it was that we managed to dump our old internet provider, because the representative who took my call to them might well have been the same individual I spoke to this morning.

That bloke annoyed me just as much.

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While I admit to having had, in the past, occasional temper flares, I like to think that I am a reasonable person. I have had to adjust often to situations I did not much care for and I can do so willingly, as long as I am convinced it is necessary. Furthermore, I am very likely to offer the benefit of the doubt.

But insult me with reasons or excuses that are nonsense and I will quickly lose my patience.

An invoice arrived in my inbox this morning from the solar company that supplies us with a small amount of power. It reduces my electricity bill by a fraction, but I use them mostly as a means of being environmentally responsible.

Some months ago I got an email from the company advising that there had been a problem with some invoices and that I might therefore in the future receive a rather larger bill than usual. I checked and noted that my invoices had been received and actioned promptly.

My last bill from this company was $68. This time last year it was $57 and the bill which followed it was for $135. So I was slightly taken aback to read this morning’s invoice: $415.

A mistake, surely?

It was early, so I had to wait but a short time to be connected.

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As I said, I am a perfectly reasonable person….

Perhaps, if I was a new customer and maybe, if I was a bit dim, I might need to have explained to me how solar energy is collected, that the Sun shines more in the summer months and therefore the charges tend to be less in – oh, in the summer.

Precisely. So why – ?

In any event, I’ve been a customer for nearly 8 years. Bills are always higher in winter.

We went around with this twice and when I saw that I was to be taken back around for a third turn on the nonsense merry-go-round, I called it quits, removing my credit card from autopay.

Until someone gives me a sensible answer, I am not paying.

Later, after I had calmed down, I went through invoices from the two previous years and there found one other that was $400, in February of 2025. This year’s February bill was only half that amount, so perhaps it was incorrect and maybe that was the problem the company was referring to, weeks ago, but if that is the case, it is what they need to say instead of lecturing me foolishly about when the Sun does and doesn’t shine.

Having worked in customer service, I know what it is like to take calls from irate clients and to take abuse for a situation that you had no personal responsibility for, so I try to be patient, but it is seriously trying when you sense the person you are speaking to is simply repeating over and over the same sentences, written on a script:

“If the customer asks X, say this:…”

“If the customer asks Y, say this:…”

…and so on.

Cleary, this agent was following the wrong script. Is it my responsibility to point him in the right direction?

It’s more of that multiple choice existence people are brought up with in the USA. No one is supposed to think, just check boxes, or push buttons. And communicate in emojis.

What sort of world is this turning into?

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