A waste...

Some people are just a waste of DNA, you know? Sometimes you just want to revoke their license to breathe.

I had one of these glorious in-duh-viduals on the phone...seems he's been hearin' this talk on the television-thingie about how his an-tenna ain't gonna work no more? And I gotta get one of those converter boxes? D’ya know who I kin talk to about that?

I was about ready to scream. How long have those commercials been on television? How long have we been hearing about the impending conversion from analog to digital transmissions and if you have an older set or use an antenna you'll need a converter box? Seriously. A year? More? The transition happens next month, dude, and you’re just NOW asking about it?

All I could think was, good luck, man, you’re gonna need it if you’re hoping to catch the next NASCAR race. (DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against NASCAR or any of its drivers or fans. I just don’t follow car races of any kind. And if you want to accuse me of profiling, all you had to do was hear his accent and you’d know for sure he’s got at least one NASCAR souvenir in his house. Double or nothing it's got Dale Earnhardt's face on it.)

So I told the poor misguided gentleman that our company was unable to help him as we had nothing to do with television transmission or antennas, despite the fact that we are mistakenly entered in the Yellow Pages under Satellite Systems. (Seriously, we shouldn’t even be in the phone book, but that’s another story). Well, who can I talk to about this? Dude…

I told him to call Comcast.

Yeah, yeah, I know, they’re just going to try and sell him cable service. Not my problem. You know what else isn’t my problem? The FCC has run out of money to reimburse people who want to buy converter boxes. You know those $40.00 vouchers they’ve been telling you about for the past year? Out of money. If you want one now, you’ll have to go on a waiting list and hope you can afford to buy one before the magic day. Dude probably won’t be happy to hear that but, yep, not my problem.

I get these calls every now and then, people wanting to reach the cable company and calling my company instead. How they make that mistake is beyond me. We’re not even in the same business. I had a woman call last week wanting to get her service disconnected because she’s moving out of the area. I told her “you need to call Comcast.” She said, “I just want to get my service disconnected. Can’t you schedule that for me?”

“Yeah, sure, me and Charlie’ll be out tomorrow, how’s 9:00?” And when we don’t show up, she’ll call again all upset and I’ll get in trouble with my boss…so you know I didn’t say that. I just repeated “Call Comcast” and gave her the number. Then filled out another “breathing license revocation form.”

Some people…