random thoughts – Day 1,497 – (Monday) – tested

Bunny blending in the yard.

Things had been seeming mostly sane lately. The official lowering of the benchmark to “tolerable” has been helpful in setting and managing daily expectations. Recent weeks featured primarily mild stress and mostly low-level annoyances that could be forgotten pretty easily and acknowledged purely for the sake of conversation. Little brown bunny has been hanging around the front and back yards, nearly blending with the dirt and dead grass.

Today did its best to collect payment for some of the recent low-key, tolerable days.

Three emails with sample ads attached were sent to different parties early last week for a new project without a single response received. Today, all parties were sent revised emails, sans attachments. I love having to do everything twice. There were two responses in a couple hours.  

Another email had been sent the same day to a media rep for advice on handling a change to a radio spot, with no response, highly unusual for this contact. A follow-up sent several days later, sans attachments, yielded a response confirming that the original email hadn’t been received. By then, half of last Tuesday had been reconstructed.

A project with a different department was close enough to approval that I could smell it and it smelled like success. Minor edits had been requested and made, but the project sat with the business line for approval of the accuracy of the changes for several days with no feedback, updates, or even an acknowledgement it had been received. A follow up was sent to nudge it along. A response finally arrived today, and in the end, the project was issued a bullet. I hate having the plug pulled on projects I have 95% completed even more than I hate having to do things twice.

An ad delivered for an event sponsorship was acknowledged by a request to change the ad to include a middle initial in the event name. The event name is referenced three times in the sponsorship info, without the middle initial every time. But sure, tell us we listed the name wrong.

Over on the so-called-life side of the work-life seesaw, there is more friction. The shipping label still hasn’t arrived for the return of the Verizon Home Internet equipment, originally requested on March 28. And again on April 4 after the “return kit” arrived with a shipping box and no mailing label. And again on April 10. Today, a fourth call was made to request it again. For the fourth time, a label was promised by a human on the other end of the line. Meanwhile, the unopened equipment box has been sitting on the dining room table since March 23 and my frustration with Verizon grows.

California and Chicago.

Speaking of phones and frustration … today, the barrage of out of state calls resumed. My phone is on “do not disturb” during work hours, and when I finally checked it, there were three missed calls from a Chicago number, and four missed calls from California, but no messages.

A fifth call from California came while my phone was in hand, and I answered it. It was yet another call for Nancy L of some credit union in New Jersey (it usually sounds like they are saying N J or E and J Credit Union, and I always regret not interrogating). 

There was a nice chat with today’s caller, who, like all the others, was told there was no Nancy at my number, nor has there been since 2013 when I was assigned this number, and further, my number is a personal number and is on the do not call registry. The callers are always apologetic when I explain all this, and I recognize it is not their fault the database they are using has bad info. Several callers have said the number is from ZoomInfo, and today’s caller confirmed this.

Instead of going to the gym after work, which had been the plan all day, I played Nancy Drew, trying to hunt down info on the other Nancy with the many callers. There are no results for a name search of Nancy L, but this time, I noticed the phone numbers on a New Jersey credit union listing had the prefix “973” and maybe that is the issue, a typo on some source file, 978 instead of 973. It’s today’s best guess to an irritating situation that has been going on for years.

The only help on the ZoomInfo site was an option to delete my own listing, not that I know there even is one, and anyway, it’s Nancy L’s listing that is the issue. There is no guidance for getting your personal phone number off someone else’s business listing. There are no obvious departments for the handling of such, nor is it addressed in the FAQs.

Wait, there’s more, just in case the work hiccups and calls for Nancy weren’t enough.  It was trash and yard waste pickup day. When I collected the empty trash bin and yard waste barrel, the trash bin was empty and waiting. The yard waste barrel, one of those big, heavy duty Rubbermaid barrels with a lid and the city issued, orange “Yard Waste” label affixed, which are emptied by hand into the back of the truck, was gone. The lid sat on the ground at the corner of the fence where the barrel had sat beneath it a few hours earlier, but there was no sign of the barrel. It wasn’t in front of my house, in the street, or at any of the neighboring properties. The current best guess is it landed in the truck with the dead leaves and stuff from the flowerbed that were in it.

Good luck, little transplant.

While outside, where the weather was dry and pleasant,  front flower beds were tidied, but there was no barrel to put the stuff in, fueling the cycle of aggravation. Luckily, there was a brown paper leaf bag leftover from who knows when. The big Bleeding Heart at the steps was divided, and chunks of it were placed towards the sides of the yard. 

Today felt a lot like a test. At least the yardwork was okay. I think. I'll reevaluate if I wake up and the transplants are dead, with a note from the mysterious Nancy L laughing about all the phone calls.