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REAL CRABBY

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I had a strangely quiet afternoon on Tuesday, and when my only late afternoon appointment cancelled, I went home. I felt  tired, slightly unwell, and really crabby.

I was crabby for several reasons. It is bitterly cold out most of this week. Our local paper just announced it is going to be published only weekly starting in March.  Since January 4th,  our mail has been  delivered a total of four times.  The last time it was delivered there were five pieces of mail belonging to a couple who live on the next block. I delivered it to them myself.  We are told that the carrier for our route quit, and our mail will only be delivered if other carriers have time. They are in the process of hiring, and suggest we have our mail held at the post office for us to pick up ourselves until we have a regular carrier.  Who has time to do that? Grrr! I wrote my congressman about this even though I don’t care for him and he makes me crabby, too.

I also was crabby due to the frustrating work of getting all the necessary documentation for an  appointment later in the week to get my REAL ID.  That is the identification card/drivers license that one needs to have after 10/2020 to use as an ID for air travel.  My driver’s license expires February 1, so it was time to get the new ID. There are very specific requirements for the documents so that there is primary source verification of identity and address. Do you think I could find my Social Security card?  Of course not. I am thankful that my most recent W-2 form came in one of the two mail deliveries this week so I can use that to provide proof of my Social Security number.

I am a government employee and I am pretty used to the slow workings of the bureaucracy.  That said, I really hope that the bureaucracy is in good fighting trim and all my documents are the right ones and sufficiently current to make my appointment at the DOT go smoothly this week.

What makes you crabby? Are you getting the REAL ID? Got any good bureaucracy tales?

44 thoughts on “REAL CRABBY”

  1. Why AAA is apparently working on her real ID, but she hasn’t commented yet. I expect if it’s this much trouble I will be hearing about it. I won’t do the Real ID until my license expires in a couple of years because I have a valid passport so I’m good to go for now.

    Crabby. Hmmm…

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  2. Another thing to make me crabby: I ordered two smallish cans, probably 10 oz each, of Lyle’s Golden Syrup. I use it instead of corn syrup. I can’t find it in town so I ordered it through Amazon. I got an email yesterday that UPS won’t deliver it unless someone is at the house to sign for it. This is syrup we are talking about. I have to phone UPS today to sort this out.

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      1. Not a bad idea, except that State employees aren’t allowed to do that, and unless a piece of mail says “Personal and Confidential, a secretary opens all the mail when it arrives.

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    3. you can leave a signature in the door and sign a thing for ongoing

      you don’t want tour delivery to go like mine
      i got fresh oranges delivered from wife’s folks left against the door for the day

      pounded in a few mails with em before they turned into thawed mush

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      1. Actually no with UPS you cannot always. I’m going through the exact same horrible UPS delivery vortex today that Renee is going through. I have stuff delivered from Amazon all the time but something that that was supposed to be delivered yesterday they’re holding it up for a signature and now they’re sending it to an access station. Grrrrr.

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        1. AVS you can sign a piece of paper that will establish your entryway as the area they should leave boxes in the future your signature will be on record and will not be needed again however if they’re delivering liquids on a day when it’s 20 below zero that may not be a good idea

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  3. I am a little surprised that you could use a W-2 to document your Social Security number for Real ID purposes. When I do volunteer tax preparation, the number has to be proved with a government-issued document, since W-2’s aren’t all that hard to fake, and they are also error-prone. You can, however, log into the sea.gov web site and print out a document from there. You have to have an account established, which can be a bit of an adventure if you haven’t done it yet, and you have to be sure you write down your password, because they don’t have an easy password reset.

    We have that cold air mass settled over us today in the Twin Cities metro. I am grateful for central heat.

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  4. Almost the only thing that makes me crabby is dealing with bureaucracies (banks, software companies, insurance companies, medical clinics, Comcast, Social Security, etc). When I am forced to deal with them, which is usually on the phone, I lose my normal sweet spirits nine times out of ten. My calls usually result in the message, “Your call is very important to us . . .” and I’m thinking, “Damn, they’ve already lied to me. This is not starting well!” Or they might say, “Due to an unusual volume of calls . . . ” and I’m thinking, “Damn! Two lies already!”

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    2. You took the words right out of my mouth, Steve. I work extra hard to be nice to the CSRs since their only doing their jobs (usually). But it’s hard to be polite to a computer that tells you to press one for this, two for that, three for something else, four for who gives a crap? five for we’re still not sure of the reason for your call, six for we’ll transfer you to someone who might have a chance in hell of answering your question, and so on and so on and so on.

      I just applied for my Real ID this week. So much fun. we happened to go in on Monday when the nationwide computer system was down. So we came back Tuesday and got it all done. My two biggest beefs are that it now takes TWO MONTHS to get the new license in the mail, and the piece of paper verifying one’s temporary license is a full-size 8.5″ x 11″ So much fun to jam that into your wallet underneath your expired license. Didn’t that sheet used to be postcard size or smaller??

      Now I’m crabby. 😦

      (not really, just feels good to vent at the govt. occasionally.)

      Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Two months! I will be interested to hear if it is different for us-probably 3 months! I will travel by air next to Montreal, so I will need a passport, and a REAL ID will be of no help.

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    4. It just happened again. A medication refill I ordered Monday will not come. The drugstore initially wrote down the request wrong. When I fixed that, the prescribing doctor (for some unknown reason) refused to approve the refill. Nobody is available to discuss this with me. Unless something happens quickly, we hit the weekend and I’ll be out of this medication, with nobody available to help. The system is set up so it is easy for some person or entity to refuse the request. Everything has to go just right for the system to work. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

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    5. I had to chuckle a little at the story that ran yesterday about Comcast, which announced a settlement of a deceptive practices lawsuit in Minnesota. They issued a statement that said the settlement “reflects our ongoing efforts to improve the customer experience….” So they think their customers’ experience is better if they are deceived and then have the joy of seeing Comcast punished when they receive their settlement check? Or are they saying that the customer experience is getting better, because after this, it obviously has nowhere to go but up?

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  5. Used my last tax filing for a couple things as I recall, address proof,I think, and SSN despite fact I have a card. Took me two visits to get it together.Local court house mavens don’t approve of that license so they try to talk you out of it and make lots of sighing groaning noise as they do it.
    Learned couple years back post office does not have to deliver your mail if they decide not to. Consolidated several routes, into fewer routes. I am at last delivery of a long route that spans a commercial area. Once got time sensitive mail on Tuesday instead of Saturday as a result they told me that did not have to deliver mail every day if they had an issue. Often I get mo mail on Tuesdays after Monday holiday, such as next week. Too much mail to deliver to get to us.

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    2. Our mail is normally delivered about 5:30 PM. But if there’s a sub that day, then no, he just won’t deliver. Because he’s “overwhelmed”…

      Forgive me if I told this story back in June. When I had cellulitis this spring I had to talk with college HR and file workmans comp claim. Spoke with a few different people there, filled out forms, the usual, nothing wrong at this point yet. Eventually they told me they’d get the information from the clinic and forward copies to me and I was NOT to make any more appointments without talking to them first. Like they should be the judge of my medical care?
      The people in my college HR office are great. It’s the State Workmans Comp people that seem to have the problems.
      Never did receive paperwork, had a few more doctor appointments and then got paperwork saying there was no record of me at the clinic. Well that’s because they were talking to the wrong hospital. Of course I told them where I was, they “said” they understood and wrote that down. But still. And then, prescriptions started going to Walgreens. Never in my life have I picked up a prescription from Walgreens. So I’d go to Walgreens and of course they had no record of me or any prescriptions.
      Eventually i was denied coverage by Workmans comp. GOOD! You’re all idiots and I didn’t want your help anyway!
      My insurance goes through Kelly and the Mayo Clinic anyway so it was all good.
      I am so lucky Kelly deals with all that.

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I was very crabby during our trip to AZ as we drove through Nebraska in the blizzard conditions that all the weather services told us would move out. And then it sat there over us. I know it is not the fault of those who predict weather, but they were not there to hold our hands as we drove through the 12″ of snow and wind over the Great Plains while we saw all the jack knifed semis in the ditches and medians. They finally closed I80 after we were through this because they had so many semis to retrieve and they could not do it with I80 open. My Nebraska 511 app displayed that road as closed for two days after the storm.

    We also are having mail service delivery issues here in AZ. From what I can observe they deliver 3 days per week, but they officially tell us it is daily. The problem with this is that Lou had his motorcycle shipped here, but he forgot the key. He had our house sitter find it and mail it, and it has now been 12 days. No key. He is crabby about this, and I am crabby with him because he did not use overnight services to get it here, nor did he certify it or insure it. And I am tired of hearing about this problem he created. GRRRR.

    I don’t watch any news anymore because it makes me crabby.

    Yesterday my sister and her husband from Iowa arrived here via SW airlines. On their plane was presidential candidate Tom Steyer, in Row 11, Seat F, returning home from the last Iowa debate which she did not view. She said he is very short.

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        1. One morning on the LGMS, Jim Ed was frustrated over something and he was in a foul mood. Dale teased him about it saying he needed a sign to alert people “Warning: Ten foot circle of exasperation”.
          And I’ve always thought A T-shirt would have been good.

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  7. I’d be crabby too if the mail wasn’t getting here on a regular basis!

    I find I get wigged out (which can be crabby or anxious) when I have too little down time – time to just catch my breath. To that end, I’ve started trying to get up earlier and sit with my cup of tea and actually NOTICE that I’m drinking the tea – rather than carrying it around with me while I perform all my morning rituals. This may be as close as I get to meditating, but it’s been very nice so far. (Apologies if I’ve already told this recently.)

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  9. A form of bureaucracy: I recently had my annual physical, and opted not to have a colonoscopy, but a colon cancer screening instead. Last time I did this. the nurse showed me what to do, and gave me the little kit in a ziplock bag to take home and mail in within so many days.

    Enter Cologuard. Found box on our front porch yesterday – 29 page booklet (also in Spanish) of DETAILED instructions, several plastic parts to use, labels, a bottle of liquid that’s a preservative. So instead of being done locally, it’s gone national… I know there are going to be people who get this thing and have NO IDEA what to do, even though they’ve done their best to make it idiot-proof.

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  10. About six years ago I had an identity theft episode to navigate through. Getting a fraud alert flag on my credit accounts was an interesting process. The IRS did everything through the postal mail, if I recall correctly. I photocopied my driver’s license and social security card and mailed them in. Most communication was handled over the phone, though, and it’s not as easy as you might think to prove you are who you say you are when you’re on the phone. Frequently they’ll ask about your cars, since license bureau records are available to them. One credit bureau asked me “What color Ford Escort wagon did you own?” I told them I had two Escort wagons – one was white, and one was red. But it’s a bad sign, in the view of the security people at the credit bureaus, if you give more than one answer. To them it means you might be trying to guess the answers. And when they ask you that question, they’re not looking at the complete history of your car ownership, they are only looking at one distinct question and the answer they believe is the right one. Same sort of issues when they ask you a multiple choice question about banks or credit cards, and more than one answer could be correct. Also, the finance companies that are listed on your credit report may be listed under names you’re not familiar with – a store credit card you got at a Pier 1 store will say Comenity Bank, or the 90-days-no-interest deal you got on an appliance will be listed under Synchrony Bank. And Citibank, Citigroup, and CitiCorp are all different entities.

    It all confused me immensely. I got through it, though.

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