On Tuesday we had to drop off the truck so the radio could be repaired. I don't know what was wrong with it and really, I don't care. But it was a pain in the butt because I needed to be at an all day meeting out of the office on Tuesday and that meant Ben wouldn't have a car. He nearly panics if he doesn't have immediate access to a car. What if he needs to run out to Dunkin' Donut for a cup of coffee? Oh my! Or to a customer site. He says the latter is the problem I but know in reality it's the former.
He was annoyed about dropping it off and that they don't provide a loaner car while they're doing repairs but we got through the day and picked up the car that evening. On Wed. he discovered that the radio still wasn't working. He was highly annoyed (rightly) at their incompetence.
He bitched and moaned all day Thursday about it. He bitched and moaned all this morning while we delivered meals to old people for Meals on Wheels. He went on and on about rotten customer service and crappy products and how it sucked away his personal time. Usually rants amuse me but after three days my patience was wearing a bit thin so I pointed out two things. One is that crappy customer service is largely the result of the bottom-line oriented customer. If price is what sells, why bother with quality? Why provide good customer service? I also pointed out that if he had less stuff he'd have to waste less time taking care of it. If we didn't have two vehicles we could decrease the time wasted on car problems by half. Well, that's not accurate because we've probably spent less time on the car in the 11 years we've had it than we have with the truck in the last two but that's a different issue. We have all sorts of electronic gadgets and other possessions that all require time and attention every now and then, time we'll never get back. Where is the balance? I'm not ready to get rid of everything. Isn't Internet access a necessity? And a time sucker? And annoyingly problematic? Our definition of necessity has changed drastically in the last twenty years.
Ben won't consider simplifying anything. He loves to acquire things, use them very little, and sell them off. He procures the majority of the time sucking gadgets in the house; I'm much less of an acquirer of stuff. He balked on the idea of having just one vehicle. He was shocked. "We couldn't do that!" I pointed out that we could but it would be a commitment and a compromise, one I'd be willing to try since I can walk to many of the places I go. He admitted that he wasn't willing to make that compromise and therein lies the problem. If you aren't willing to get rid of the time-sucking possessions then you're going to need to accept the time suckage.
He doesn't like it when I say things like that for some reason.
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2 comments:
This is just such a good post!!!
Figuring out how to strike these balances (along with which sacrifices one can make with regard to fair wages, buying local, etc.) is SO FREAKING HARD!!! I care about these things, and it's hard to figure out which I can make, which I can't, and which I might not be able to right now, but maybe later.
I could have written this post myself, maybe not so eloquently, but I empathize with your point, and thoroughly! Most days, I feel like our "things" are eating us alive. Here's an excellent example: we replaced our old video camera with a new and "improved" digital camera that records on mini-DVDs. We've managed to do some recording, but the instruction manual is so long and complicated, that after several months, we still haven't managed to invest the time it takes to read the manual to figure out how we can make the videos play back! Not to mention figuring out how to copy them. Makes me yearn for the old 8mmm tapes we had.
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