Text Book Service

28 February and the first of March – Day was slow – still felt frazzled by previous night and also had my first redel in the morning and was torn between delivering it as early as I could and not alerting any untoward dispatchers that I was available in town but after a very uncalled for interrogation by Shifty all was well.  Had an awesome experience when I went to the Pen Shop (not affiliated with the Pen Shop in Vancouver) where I hoped to get some advice on repairing my trusty Space Pen? (the best pen in the world) which was having issues.  I was greeted by a friendly clerk and I explained my dilemma and two other individuals in the shop, seeming to be customers, piped up with their opinion on what might be wrong.  They seemed remarkably well informed of the ins and outs of how a Space Pen worked and also the legal warranties associated with the owner of one of these fine writing implements.  It was soon revealed that these two were the sales reps from Fisher and after a cursory examination they identified that it was the spring that was worn and told me that I would be able to send it in to Fisher for a replacement or, alternatively, I could just swap it with one he had in his display case which was the exact same model and finish.  Of course, only if all parties are amenable.  And we were.  That’s the kind of experience that gets put in marketing text books as examples of how a good business should work.  Rest of the day wasn’t so grand and at the end of it I was slyly creeping home, pretending to still be in the city and praying that nobody called in a late job so I could go to the movies. Thwarted again from seeing the Good Shepherd but it’s probably not that great anyway and ended up in Letters from Iwo Jima – a decent war movie as they go but Thin Red Line it ent ... Apparently war is hell but I think I should know that by now.   The first day of the month did not herald an end to the last day of the previous month’s chafe and the day started uncomfortable and got to a low level of agony by the end.  A relatively good morning aided by a gold mine at MSJ (although the prissy mailroom clerk’s ridiculous adherence to ‘the process’ didn’t do much to aide the efficiency of the situation) was followed by a great big heap of nothing and some of the worst dispatching I’ve experienced in a long time.  Very pleasant end of the day – on call for a while but remedied with a small beer which did much for my mood.  The week’s aches and pains seem to have peaked far earlier than I’d like them to have but that’s par for the course in the class and there’s not much one can do about it other than the usual remedies so not much was done.