ode to all the incompetent people

today has been a rat race. i've been out and about for the better part of 5-6 hours and not done anything at home since i left at 9:30 this morning.

what have i been up to and who are "all the incompetent people"? let me explain.

while i was home in TN last week, my car got scratched up. i'm not one for having to have the most shiny car ever, but a scratch entirely across one of my doors clear down to the metal is not good... it'll rust eventually and i can't have that. my insurance company was closed that day, so i filed a claim on their website, and they called me back the next day and said if i got two estimates once i was back in NJ, and faxed them, they'd send me a check to fix the darn thing.

saturday i got back to NJ, yesterday was sunday and a holiday, so today was "get 2 estimates and fax them" day.

bad hypothesis number 1: if i find two auto body shops that are open today, i can get two estimates in a timely fashion... maybe 30-40 minutes at each place tops.

this was false.

maaco had me in and out in a reasonable amount of time, even dealing with other customers first... they're the only national chain in the area that i recognize...

then it was back to my neighborhood which is overflowing with auto body shops if you go in the right direction. not a one of them would help me though. the worst was acme auto body (in edison, NJ). after i parked in the (nearly full) estimates parking area, and sat in the office for 5 minutes, an older man (my parents' age) came in for the garage and asked "what do you want?" "i need an estimate on my car" "who are you? did i give you an appointment?" "nope, i just need an estimate though, most places don't need appointments, so i thought i'd stop in" "well, i'm too busy for you this week and most of next week... where are you from anyhow?" "my insurance is in TN" "i'm not taking new customers, especially ones who aren't from edison, right now anyhow. and i don't know who you think you are thinking guys are gonna have their shops open today anyways. bye" (and he opened the door as he spoke signaling i should leave.) i don't want to do business with someone like that anyhow, but sheesh... we're not taking new customers right now? what a way to encourage business and a good word getting spread around. in case you didn't catch that and you're in middlesex county NJ, avoid acme auto body in edison.

turns out i did manage to find a 2nd shop... a few miles away in new brunswick and they were friendly as could be.... but acme autobody in edison is incompetent group of people number one.

bad hypothesis number 2: since, (1) according to the rutgers library website, you can get faxes sent from the alexander library and the library of science and medicine (LSM), and furthermore, since (2) the rutgers library website claimed the LSM is open from 10-5 today, i assumed that i could get a fax sent from LSM without a problem if i showed up by 5.

this wasn't quite true, but not as bad of a story as the car place. i showed up around 2:30, 6 pages of car stuff in hand, and beelined for the circulation desk and asked the girl there "i haven't been in here before, where can i go to send a fax?".... english is not her first language so she asked me to repeat 3 times before i said "fax machine?" and held up my hand of papers. she went in the back to check with older employees who said they don't do that. i replied that it said on the library website that they did, so she went back to her supervisor again and repeated what i said, and then two older staffers came out to talk to me. they said if i could show them where on the rutgers website it said that they'd do it for free, but they didn't know that they did fax services for the public. in about three clicks, i pulled up this blurb to which they were utterly amazed. they faxed my 6 pages with a smile, and said it was free since i did a service for them by pointing out that they're supposed to send faxes, which they were previously unaware of.

go figure.

not incompetent, just confused, but reacted quite well to it. :)

acme auto body: incompetent
rutgers library of science and medicine staff: wonderfully nice and happy people, even if they're not fully aware of what the university at large claims they do. :)

the end.