Board Thread:Watercooler 2.0/@comment-6191693-20131230040409/@comment-6191693-20140120021126

OK, so here's the calamity I alluded to on the NS forum, copy+pasted from a rant I sent to my friend.

First, I had to take the day off, anyway, because I got a letter from the welfare office saying that I needed to come downtown to a meeting at a time I did not choose, missing a day I could be making money, so that I could prove to them that I'm still poor and still need food stamps.

Since I had the day off, I decided to help my buddy get his messed up state ID sorted out in the morning before I had to be at my meeting at 1:30. After having to run all over the west side of town, gathering various bits and pieces like some sort of really tedious quest in an RPG, we go to the BMV, only to find out that there was one more thing he needed to get from home. OK. Minor inconvenience. No big deal. Except we were trapped at the BMV.

When I went out to my car, my key just did not want to go into my ignition cylinder. I tried every trick in the book: jiggling the key, jiggling the steering wheel, fucking with the brake and the gear shifter, tapping hard on the key, etc. With a long, complicated, and drawn-out exchange of arranging a number of rides to various places from two different friends, we finally managed to get him his ID, which was the only thing that went sort of almost right today. There was still my car.

We had fetched my other key and a can of WD-40 from my house, hoping that one or both would do the trick. No such luck. Turns out my ignition cylinder was shot, which I knew wouldn't be cheap. But I still had to go to my meeting downtown, so it would have to wait until later.

The meeting was uneventful, if a bit inconvenient because my ride had other things she needed to do before she could come back to pick me up (it had lasted a lot less time than either of us had expected). So we went back to my place to explore my options for getting my car fixed. I called Ford to ask them what to do and they pretty much told me they couldn't tell me anything until I towed it to their shop. Since I figured I'd need a tow anyway, I called our family mechanic. He wasn't there, but one of his guys answered the phone and said that, with labor, it could get to be pretty expensive, plus I figured I'd be paying for a tow, so I gave him a "maybe" and called a locksmith. The locksmith said he wouldn't be able to make it until tomorrow and it would cost $150-200 if he could repair it and $300+ if he had to replace it. I gave him a maybe and called my mom to ask what to do. I also called the insurance company and found out that, even though I only have the minimum coverage, they do offer emergency roadside assistance, including tows. So I decided to do that and just have it towed to the mechanic.

The tow company said they'd be there in 45 minutes. Then the driver said he was running late and we should give him another 45, so we did, and headed back to the BMV. He was another hour later than the extra 45 minutes later. But whatever. The weather sucks. They're busy. I can forgive that.

He shows up in this jankety-ass old tow truck with one headlight and the Slenderman's hillbilly brother steps out. He asks what the problem is and I explain it to him. Confirming what I had already read on the internet, he said, "Yeah, that's a really common problem with these little Focuses. My wife had one that was an '02 and she had the same problem. There's a trick to fix it. Give me your key." I'm thinking this guy's a professional and I had no reason not to trust him, especially if he could help get me out of having to pay $200+, so I gave him my key and he goes back to the truck to get some kind of big hook. He says, "Well this works better with a hammer, but this should do." I told him I had a hammer in my trunk and I gave it to him. He proceeds to put my key in the ignition and promptly beat the ever-loving shit out of it with the hammer. By this point, it was too late for me to do much of anything.

I notice bits of plastic flying around and he says, "Whoops. The little plastic cover for your key broke. Eh, it'll be fine." Of course, I have those stupid transponder keys with the computer chips in them -- the ones that are like over a hundred dollars. I asked him if it would still work if the plastic was broken and the transponder was out of it. He assured me it would and kept on hammering away. Then he took a pair of pliers and started twisting hard on my key while he kept on pounding away. Eventually a big piece of my ignition cylinder just kind of fell out and he threw the mangled, twisted remnant of my key on the floor and said, "Whelp, looks like you're gonna need a new ignition cylinder for sure, then, and some new keys, too."

So I get home and give Slender Man ample time to get my car to the shop so that it wouldn't suddenly appear there with some new dents in it or anything like that, then I called State Farm to complain. The customer service lady was shocked and said she'd never heard such an awful story from a customer before, apologized profusely, and put me on hold to go ask her boss what the fuck to do in such a crazy situation. 25 minutes of horrendous hold music later, she finally comes back to say that she was on the phone with Road America, the company that had dispatched the truck, but that they had tried to transfer her call, did so incorrectly, and she got disconnected. Apologizing again, she put me back on hold. She came back another 20 minutes later to tell me that the office I needed to speak to was only open Monday through Friday, 9-5, which was why she was disconnected (they were closed -- this was around 9 this evening).

She said that it would be Road America's responsibility to pay for the damage to my car and that I would need to talk to them as soon as they open, but she wasn't sure if they'd be open for MLK on Monday. In the mean time, she said, she'd be putting in a call to my agent and said I should do the same. She also said I needed to call my mechanic when he opens tomorrow to tell him NOT to work on my car until we can figure out what Road America will be willing to pay for, which means it won't even be touched until next Monday at the very earliest, or maybe Tuesday. This is for a repair that would otherwise have only needed to last until tomorrow evening.

Now I need to figure out how I'm going to get to and from work next week until I can get my car back. My insurance doesn't normally cover a rental, but the customer service lady said that if I asked my agent when his office is open, he might be able to pull some strings for me, given the circumstances. Of course, that won't be until at least Monday.

This is on top of the bullshit I've had to put up with the rest of this week. I had a tire blow out on Monday night. I had to drive to work (an hour's drive) on the doughnut Tuesday morning, on the interstate, which was awful. Then, after work, I go out to the parking lot to find out that some chucklehead thought it would be funny to let all the air out of my doughnut. At first I wasn't sure if that was the case, or if I had run over something and gotten a puncture, which would also be terrible, but I filled it up at the gas station and it held air all the way back home. I think it's somehow worse that someone had done that than if it had actually gone flat on its own. Who drains someone's SPARE tire? Isn't that person clearly already having a bad enough day?

Then I spent all of yesterday evening, which I was supposed to spend fixing my dad's car for him (and getting paid for it), picking up my brother, who had crashed his car all the way on the opposite side of the west side of Cincinnati (I was still in Hamilton). Then I had to deal with all of his drama and with him not answering his phone or any of my questions when I did finally get ahold of him, then I had to drive all over the west side of town looking for the shop he was towed to because he can't give directions, then I had to spend the whole evening with him whining and yelling at me and talking to his girlfriend instead of calling his insurance company like the tow people told him to.