22:44 - 26.05.06
Bizarre
Bizarre. That was the muted undertone today, dear diary. I had ordered groceries for delivery this morning. That was a major shift in my buying habits, but I wanted to avoid the grocery stores, because of that little health scare on Wednesday. My immune system is still likely a bit weak and the identified cases of the Norwalk virus in this city is up 16 times what it was last year for this month. Good choice, since I also woke up with a bout of nausea that lasted until mid-afternoon. Bleagh. Around 9 am the first phone call came. Your driver called in sick, so we've loaded your order onto another truck. It will mean that your delivery will be late. No problem. Worked on other tasks - like paying bills - and checking up on some sales in the home renovation arena. There is one of the Canadian stores featuring solar panels, for example, and they even provide brochures explaining the technology and how to use it. There were ads for awnings with price included and also sales on a gas furnace should I change my mind and choose that option instead. Time to contemplate the possible combinations possible was useful.
The deadline for that grocery delivery came and went - by two hours. Now I don't mind waiting, but this was getting a bit drawn out. I had other things I wanted to do where hearing someone knocking wouldn't be possible - like working in the backyard. Called customer service and was told that the second driver had come in late due to being in a car accident. Oh dear. The queasiness I had been feeling earlier was ramping up again, so I also wanted to have a nap so the body could fight off whatever was trying to make a home in my GI tract. There was a very strained tone in the voice of the agent and it seemed she was choosing her words as though a bomb might explode, if she said the wrong thing. I hadn't been cranky when I called, but it made me cranky knowing I wasn't being given the entire story. She signed off by saying she had no idea when my driver might make it to my home. I was actually wondering if the driver was alright to be working myself.
Another hour went by and I called again. By then I definitely needed to lie down and I was frustrated because I hadn't been able to accomplish what I had intended because of the uncertainty of the arrival time. For example, I wanted to wash my hair, but what if the delivery truck pulled up while I was in the shower? Even if I did hear the knocking, did I really want to stand in my front doorway wrapped in nothing but a towel trying to carry groceries up the stairs. Not. I asked the agent - a different one who also had that "there's something I can't say" tone in her voice - to ask the driver to call first and explained about not being well and needing to rest. She agreed.
I started dinner for my youngest. Fed and watered the cats who were being very naughty to show their displeasure because their litter boxes weren't changed yet, given that clean litter was one of the key elements of that grocery order. It was becoming quite scentuous in the house partly because of that and partly because I had needed to turn on the space heaters after lunch because it was so cold in the house. It has been raining for two days now, so all the warmth soaked up in those hot days last few weeks has been fully absorbed and washed away in the downpour. Napped briefly until the phone rang again. My youngest called from the grocery store on his way home. Need anything? I explained the day, so he decided he would buy litter for the cats and pho for us. Stress relief all around.
Just after that the phone rang again and it was the head of customer service. The driver who had been in the car accident had had to go home because she was too ill to continue. Delivery would not be possible today. Did I want to reschedule. Not really, but whatever, sometimes it isn't really anyone's fault when things go awry. Then it got strange again. First available time for delivery would be early next week. Huh? You see this grocery outlet runs deliveries all weekends - night and day - just as they do during the week. How far behind in deliveries were they and were they putting new orders first? Then I'd just reorder. No, that wasn't the issue. The agent muttered about it just being one of those weeks where deaths in the family, illness and other unexpected problems had all converged to decimate their available staff. I decided to cancel, because it sounded as though there was a lot more going on than just a couple of drivers incapacitated.
I hung up and started to prepare for the evening when the phone rang yet again. It was the driver who had been in the car accident. Was there anyway I would change my mind about the cancellation? If so, she would try to deliver my order tomorrow. I asked her if she was well enough to do that. She sounded teary at that point and said she needed to do it, because she was the only available driver now. Now this is a city of about 1 million souls. A city wide delvery service for groceries should have more than half a dozen workers available to cover that demand. Logistically this city covers over 700 sq miles. Just the physical time to travel from one end to the other would not make the low staffing rate feasible or sustainable, as was being very strongly demonstrated by this one day's round of phone calls. She said, with a bit of a quiver in her voice, that she was setting boundaries with the company by refusing to work longer today. That sounded as though this inappropriate demand on one worker was a regular feature of her and other staff's employment. That told me she had likely been threatened with firing, if she "lost" all the revenue for the orders in her truck. Thousands of dollars likely. The irony is that if she had been in an accident on the job, our labour laws would have required that she be seen immediately by medical staff and likely sent home as a result. No deliveries at all and a major fine if they had even tried to fire her. Yet here she was required to work and also was being told she would be penalized, because the company failed to have enough staff available. That is ludicrous. What about road safety for other drivers. If this woman was injured, should she even be allowed behind the wheel of a very large vehicle. Would the company stand behind her if she passed out and was in another accident, for example. Not likely. Anyway, I told if she felt that she really must deliver tomorrow I would not cancel the order, but I signed off from our conversation quite angry with the company. I was tempted to call them and give them a piece of my mind for abusing their power as an employer, but that might make things even worse for that driver. As I noted, there was something in the voices of the callers earlier that told me the whole story was far from being told. It wouldn't be the customer service reps who were making those decisions. The likelihood of me tracking down someone who would have, late on a Friday afternoon, wasn't likely either. I thought about the worker shortage in the city and the labour troubles this company has had. They've already had a work-to-rule campaign with their warehouse staff and several problems with their out-sourced driver service. Last I spoke with them during the election, they had gone back to hiring their own people. Obviously that wasn't working either.
I hung up and my youngest walked in. He said that he had been delayed because there were police cars in our bank parking lot and the building was taped off. He speculated that they had been there for some time and that he hadn't really wanted to go there. Fair enough. We watched the news, but there was no mention of what had happened, although I did recall hearing sirens going for quite a while just after lunch. There were some other odd stories. Is there a ring of thieves working in the post office. Also, there were more calls for investigating the role Enron had in our Province's deregulation of utility companies in the 1990's. Energy prices shot through the roof in this oil based economy. No surprise, and there are plenty of smoking guns still to allow for discovery of what happened, including court transcripts. Government malfeasance at the very least. Tended to the meal and the cats, as my youngest told me about the workplace injury of one of his co-workers too. Good strange news too. Kudos to Scotchguard. The one piece that made me feel better about my battle with the body was the one about Janet Jackson. Misery needs to know it has company. Hard to beat oneself up when people who have much more resources still encounter trouble. Wish I had her trainer too - just for support of course. Just one of those days I guess. Mercury square Uranus astrologically and comets astronomically.
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