Well! I never!
I opened my mail this morning and found a letter from the City of Toronto. Curious! It was a parking ticket for $76 for an infraction on Yonge St. in downtown Toronto in early June. What!!!!
I don’t know what this is about, but I know the car was not in downtown Toronto in June, or at any other time. The last time we visited downtown Toronto was years and years ago, and even then we were nowhere near Yonge St.
What pisses me off is that now the onus is on me to either pay the ticket or dispute it. I called them, got transferred around until they hung up on me. I called them again, got transferred around until they hung up on me. I called a third time and finally found a human voice, a person who said the fine was paid and the car was a Mazda, my car is not a Mazda, I did not pay the fine. She gave me another number to call, and that fellow told me the fine had not been paid, the car ticketed was a Mazda, that I needed to send my documentation and proof to the dispute department by email. &*%#&(, they decide to mail me a ticket from out of nowhere, and now I have to produce PROOF that they made a mistake, and then they will CONSIDER my case. So, I wrote an email message with the details, and sent it to them.
This is harassment in my view, that some idiot can decide to mail out false tickets and then people have to struggle to get it straightened out, or pay the $76 fine, plus an additional $40 if you are late with your payment. Some people would find it easier just to pay the darn ticket, but quite frankly I am not in an income bracket to have that kind of money STOLEN out of my pocket by some idiot bureaucrat.
It is all well and good to make mistakes, but when the bureaucracy is so calcified in inefficiency that the mistake cannot be easily remedied, well, it amounts to small scale harassment, in my view.
And while I am complaining, I will add my recent experience with the Scarborough Hospital. When I found out that my brother had collapsed with a heart attack and was taken to that hospital, I called to find out how he was doing, and when I could come to see him. The woman who answered the call told me that he had been brought in, but that “he left”. A long drawn out interaction ensued as she insisted that “he left”, and I insisted that he was unconscious and could not have possibly left, and that she needed to find him! It was more than ten minutes of assertive discussion on my part before she finally discovered that he had been transferred to another hospital ICU, still unconscious. Good God! Shame on them for the insensitive ignorance in dealing with the family of a fatally ill patient.
OK, this kind of baloney happens in threes. That is two down, one to go. It will come from out of nowhere, and take me by surprise. But I know it is coming, the universe is on that roll of three, currently one of insensitive, officious bureaucracies.
I had better check the due dates on my library books! No, wait, I would love that number three was a small fine on overdue library books!
Today is outrageously hot, and humid. It is just past noon and already the humidex is 41C, which is 105.8 F. Yikes, the peak of the day’s heat isn’t even here yet.
I did go for my walk this morning, very early, 6:30 a.m., and it wasn’t too bad. By the time the dishwasher was delivered mid-morning, it was blistering hot out there. The delivery fellows were very nice, they delivered our washer and dryer last year, so they found us without any problem. They unpacked the unit and it looked fine, so I took delivery. Lets hope it is a good unit.
Well, I am going to end this entry with the third pending bureaucratic misery still hanging mysteriously over my head.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
34°C
Date: 12:00 PM EDT Thursday 11 August 2016
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 28.2°C
Dewpoint: 20.4°C
Humidity:62%
Wind:S 22 km/h
Humidex: 41 (105.8)
Quote
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948
[Hear that Toronto bureaucrats! I am purifying my thoughts, so watch out!]
Shoot. I just erased by mistake my whole comment. Forget it. It’s tht hot here too… and I wish Paul would get home so he can cool off. Out in this since 5:30 a.m. is not ideal on a body!
Bex! Maybe your annoying loss of the whole comment is my number three annoyance! I live in hope, 🙂
I do hope Paul arrives home in good form! Attila came in a little while ago and he seems fine, the drive home in an air conditioned car helps I’m sure.
We need siestas! What a lovely thought!
Hi Maggie,
Sounds like you’re in the south! We have discovered that NC is not exactly people friendly and especially to seniors. Hubby is always fighting some battle. I really don’t know how he does it. But fight he does.
For example Medicare owes me over $3,000 for money they took out when they should not have (this goes back to 2014). It has taken over a year (my case) and I was paid a third of that recently. So continue to fight he will. We have to appeal.
Bills are always coming in wrong and he has to make calls to get them corrected. For some reason even though we have health insurance and Medicare the medical offices often do not run the fee through Medicare too. Oh, it gets confusing but it has to do with not really doing a their job either because they don’t know how or don’t feel like it. There really are no excuses. We seem to always be filling out paperwork for some damn thing.
I empathize with your getting a ticket. That seemed like a big mistake. But none the less puts stress on you and having to make all those calls. Hung up on you two times why I’d be seeing red. I’m not one for much patience (sad to say) so don’t take that type of thing lightly. So many of our calls at times end up going over seas to people hubby can barely understand. Annoying is an understatement. I hope that the ticket dilemma gets resolved fast. They owe you an apology.
Hospitals seem too crowded, under staffed and ill informed. I’m glad you are a determined woman and found where your brother was. One really does have to fight the system at times. You end up being your own advocate and having to continually do follow-ups. When I have appointments I call in advance to be sure they have been noted. It’s surprising how many mistakes get made.
It is hot here today too but just in the 90s. Hot enough though that I had to cut shopping short with hubby because I felt like my life force was leaving my body. Is that fall up ahead!
Nora, how lucky you are to have your hubby to go to bat for you both!! The bigger the organization, the bigger the annoyance potential. Attila and I tend to gravitate to the places, organizations, people who want to make things work, and cut out as much as possible those that forget they are dealing with people. I fight when I have to, and avoid whenever I can.
Services of all kinds are “past their peak”. Things certainly worked more smoothly through most of my adult years, but that code of ethics is almost completely gone now. Of course, those with lots of money to oil the machine aren’t noticing the change, and maybe the change is that there are fewer and fewer and fewer citizens of the continent with lots of money.
With me, these kinds of silly things usually come in clusters. I will be glad to find out what number three will be, get my teeth into it, and get it over with.
In the 90s is hot enough! I can really relate to feeling like the life force is leaving your body in the heat! Keep cool!
I know that these annoyances seem to come in clusters, and I hope this cluster is over for you. Sounds like you have paid you dues this round! Enjoy the rest of your summer, Maggie!
Thank goodness Toronto allows dispute resolution by email for tickets! Hopefully, it’s sufficient that you just prove your car isn’t a Mazda, as there often aren’t too many ways to prove you weren’t in the city – unless you happened to be at an appt at the exact time in question.
Glad to hear you were able to straighten out the confusion about your brother so you could be with him.
I’m glad I don’t notice a pattern of threes when things happen to me. I think I’d constantly wear myself to a frazzle watching/waiting for the 3rd shoe to drop.
We had more rain here during the night. I swear we must be living in Camelot, where it never rains til after sunset. But wherever we are, our grass has once again turned green.
Temp here currently is 30C (80F) with a humidex of 39C (102F). So glad for ac!
Teri, I hope this email dispute settlement process is a good thing, i have my doubts. I know they opened and read the email I sent them, I have proof of that, so hopefully I won’t need proof of that. There is no way on God’s Green Earth that I would make a trip to Toronto to dispute this in person, it would cost me much more than the $76 fine! What a racket!
Yes, the clusters sometimes cause a bit of stress, but then I know that if I just soldier through the three incidences, I’lll come out the other end.
Rain! We haven’t seen it for so long that I don’t believe in it anymore! Nothing here is green, except some very hardy weeds and most of the trees in this neighbourhood where the soil is fairly deep. I have to admit I can only remember one other summer like this, when all the candles in my apartment melted into puddles, and they were not in the sun.
Dishwasher!!!!! I am envious!!!!!
Scott sent a water sample off for testing yesterday … perhaps its mineral content affects the type of water treatment system we purchase, and he is about to get serious about it. After 14 years without a dishwasher, having one is going to be a real treat.
Kate, I feel like royalty getting a dishwasher! I wish you much success with your water treatment system, we are on town water, treated at the water treatment plant, filtered by a Burkey here at home for drinking, and used right out of the tap for the new dishwasher. My Mom pointed out that the huge advantage to the dishwasher is that the dirty dishes are stacked in it, not on the counters!