As the saying goes, bad luck comes in threes. It appears that annoyances come in threes as well.
Late this morning, right after I got up, I discovered we had no water. Before dialing the phone to report our state of waterlessness, I glanced with disdain at yesterday's dishes in the kitchen sink. The water problem was fixed in less than two hours' time, but the dishes are still awaiting my attention. They can wait.
Today's second annoyance occurred after Rebel and I drove to our mailbox, returned home, and I opened a credit card statement, informing me I had a $39 late charge in addition to my last unpaid payment along with the current payment due, which annoyed me because I had mailed them my last payment immediately upon receipt of their previous statement on May 14. So I phoned the credit card company and listened to a recording, which informed me they had received my payment on June 14, hence, the late charge. Excuse me, where had my check been for four weeks? Putting it nicely, I suspected a clerical error on the part of someone at the credit card company, since my check posting exactly one month after the date on my check appeared a bit too coincidental. What are the odds? And so I spoke to a credit card representative, who said it had been the fault of the post office that they'd received my check so late, and he removed the $39 late fee. (Granted, it is possible that my check had gotten temporarily lost by the post office. I once received a postcard from Bethlehem, PA, mailed years earlier, which finally arrived in my mailbox with a note saying that it had been stuck inside some postal machinery. I digress.) Next step: I asked the customer service rep the amount of my corrected payment, and when it didn't sound right to me because it was nearly double what I'm used to paying as the minimum, I questioned the rep again. If you haven't guessed, my interest rates had gone up because of my so-called late payment. While the rep talked with his supervisor, I was thinking to myself what an annoyance it would be to have to spend my afternoon, my time and energy, reporting the credit card company if they didn't return my account to its former interest rate. While the rep had me on hold, I decided I would go straight to the top, to the one responsible for credit card reform, meaning someone who works at the federal government level. But instead of doing that, here I am; after the rep talked with his superior, my credit card interest rate was dropped back to its former low rate. And Rebel and I drove to the mailbox this afternoon, before the arrival of the postal carrier, simply to mail my latest credit card payment, due on July 3. Oh, today's polite credit card rep assured me that payments get credited almost immediately or within 24 hours, or whatever it was he said, while in my mind I had a tape playing a conversation I'd had perhaps a couple of years ago with a nasty credit card rep from a different company, who told me it sometimes takes up to 10 days for payments to get posted and, hence, that accounted for the late charge I'd called about in that particular instance. But now we have credit card reform....
Annoyance number three concerns the interruption of my TV viewing. Instead of watching The View, I was on the phone with the credit card company. Fine, when I finished with that annoyance, I sat down to watch an encore presentation of The Bonnie Hunt Show, but much to my disappointment, the show has gone off the air.
