a confused girl with a clipboard
So I'm sitting at home after a screwing things up magnificently at the cubicle, beer in hand, pants off, shirt unbuttoned. Full relaxation mode in effect. When suddenly there comes a rapping at my chamber door. Now I've recently moved, and since my new apartment is pretty much awful, exactly three friends of mine have been here since I moved in and two of them live on the other side of the country. I'm pretty sure the other one wouldn't just show up without letting me know first. Confusion sets in.
I toss on a pair of pants, fasten a paltry number of shirt buttons and squeeze the door open cautiously to find a girl roughly my age with a clipboard and a name tag with a bold Rogers logo emblazoned across it.
I sigh heavily.
Examining her clipboard she declares, "You must be Montserrat, I'm here to ensure all your Rogers services are satisfying your needs". "No that's not me", I reply, "I just moved in, I'm subletting from her".
Her eyes shine briefly as she switches into new customer mode. "Oh!", she says. "Well are you a Rogers customer?"
"I don't own a TV", I tell her honestly. "Internet?", she says, grinning.
When I moved in I was a DSL customer. Not Bell, but a smaller DSL reseller here in Southern Ontario. However my crappy apartment doesn't have a phone connection. Oh there's a phone jack, but the wire goes nowhere. I cancelled the account after paying for two months of useless service. The building has yet to respond to my now two month old request to have the connection repaired. So no, I have no internet service. But my neighbours do, and no one has showed them how to configure wifi security yet. I think I'll send them a nice bundt cake for Christmas.
"No. No internet", I tell her.
"Cell phone?", she asks. Truth be told I was a Rogers cellular customer until I took a trip out of the country earlier this year. I called before departing to find out what my roaming chargers were like and was assured that they were quite reasonable. I came home from my expensive vacation to a five-hundred dollar Rogers bill that I refused to pay. They charged interest for several months while I argued with them until it hit about eight hundred. They hired a lawyer. I payed the bill and cancelled my account. I figure they spent a few bucks per hour on their own collections people, another few on the collection agency, and prolly a bit more on the lawyer. I feel like I got my money's worth.
"No", I tell her. "I don't have a cell phone".
"Well you must have a home phone", she declared.
"Must I?"
"Oh" ... "Well, what do you do when you're at home?", she asks with a look of genuine confusion.
"Read. Drink. Sleep. But not always in that order."
"Oh", she says glancing back at the clipboard for reassurance before adding, "Well have a good night then".
Thanks clipboard girl. I'm sure I will.