“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 624 (Tuesday)

The day began with a weird dream set in a gray concrete building that felt huge and full of corridors and somehow, despite not seeing prisoners, I knew it was a prison. There were intimidating dudes in street clothes following me and two other women I didn’t know through the place. I said I was there only to apply for a marketing job, and that yes, I was allowed to leave.

While seeking an exit, the other two women and I visited a rest room (pee before you go!). The stalls were crammed with stuff as if doubling as a storage room. Two massive and intimidating guys followed us in and blocked the doorway. One tossed two huge clear plastic bags of white pills into the stuff in the restroom and I knew we would be blamed for it. We got out of the room and tried to find an exit but it was all dead-end corridors.

A long hallway led us to a huge and bustling mall that was still part of the prison complex and was as nerve-wracking as the rest of the building. There was a dirt room with two massive pickup trucks that seemed too large to move out of there, but I wanted to try and drive one through a wall. Then I woke up, confused and disoriented. I’m sure there a many psychological messages in that dream, especially about dead ends and road blocks and feeling trapped.

The awake part of the day felt a lot like the dream. There were problems and pitfalls, speed bumps and road blocks at almost every step. There was even a minor hissy fit, but I was working remotely today, so there were no witnesses. 

This took forever ...

Tasks lacked sufficient information to act on them and led to delays and dead ends. There were error messages and multiple computer issues included applications and programs freezing several times and for most of the last hour of the workday. Things wouldn't close. Things wouldn't open. Help was unavailable. Patience was gone. Some stuff might have been smashed if I didn’t know how much it costs to replace things. 

The day was full of frustration mixed with regret over having sold my freestanding punching bag before moving back from Tennessee. There have been way too many days I’ve needed that thing, and especially today.

This went on for a zillion screens.

It didn’t stop with the end of the work day, either. After retiring to the living room to seek solace in an escapist movie or show, (which sounds a lot nicer than the more accurate “plopping my arse on the couch to stare at the TV screen”), suddenly Xfnity was messed up. The evening routine is to power on the TV with the remote, click the Xfinity button, arrow over four clicks to the right to Apps, press OK, and choose either Netflix or Prime or sometimes hulu from the row of icons across the top of the screen.

Today, to add a level of royal icing to the multitiered crap cake of the day, the apps are all different. No familiar top row of subscription apps, but there are suddenly about a million other options, grouped by categories including Sports, Games, Gaming Videos, Kids & Family, News & Info, and on and on and on, none of which are the paid subscription apps like Prime and Netflix. They were definitely there last night when I watched the entirety of Tiger King 2. 

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It was an hour of searching and scrolling through selections, checking the mobile app and the website for help, and then, after multiple rounds of getting nowhere with the robot agent and self-service tools, online chats with two Live Agents. The first confessed to being from the wrong department – billing – and transferred me to another agent. The second Live Agent checked a lot of things that took a lot of time and then reset the box.

If ever there was a day worthy of punching and kicking the stuffing out of a weight bag, today was it, from start to finish.

There is a lesson, but I already knew it. The next time I move (if there is a next time and I almost hope there is not), if the choice is golf clubs, ice skates, a kick bag, 210 vinyl albums in a box and two night tables, or a washer and dryer set, trust me, the washer and dryer will get the boot and not the other stuff. And sometimes nightmares just roll right into daytime wide awake shit shows.