Have Faith

If you've spoken to me at all this week, you probably got to witness the dormant outrage that lives within me. I think I'm a relatively patient person, and as much as I can, I will stand back and let my fellow humans be the erroneous beings that they are (not that I'm excluding MYSELF from falibility) and say nothing. But hurt me or something close to me and it's SO over!

Everyone knows that my camera and I are like a couple. I LOVE MY CAMERA!! But I had to bring it in to Best Buy to get fixed because the shutter wasn't opening all the way. Glad that I had bought a warranty for free repairs and maintenance, I set out to the electronic superstore the week before thanksgiving, November 20 to make use of my $60. The invoice they gave me read: "SCHEDULED COMPLETION DATE: November 26. Too busy during thanksgiving weekend to pick it up, I decided to wait until Monday, December 1 to call in and let them know I was coming to pick up my camera. 1:15 pm, I call Best Buy and the customer service guy says that he can't find in the computer that the camera had arrived. Knowing that there might be delays, I say OK, and decided to call again the next day. "I'm sorry ma'am," the girl says, "But I don't see that your camera has been returned to us yet." A little upset, I tell her how long ago I dropped it off and that it was scheduled to be ready on November 26. She apologized, yada yada yada, and knowing that she has no control over this, I let it slide until Wednesday. I speak with another young lady who says that my camera may have been dropped off on november 20th, but it wasn't physically sent to the vendor until NOVEMBER 24TH!!! So here I am, ticked off as hell that they would send the camera to be fixed 2 days before the completion date they typed onto the invoice AND THEN she had the nerve to say, "well ma'am, the date is really just an estimate. It won't always be ready by then." THEN PUT ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE DUMBASSES NOT SCHEDULED! And then she goes on to say that there is a UPS tracking # in the computer but she doesn't know if that's for an incoming or outgoing package. I reprimand her for a few minutes and midway into her, "Thank you for calling Best--" I banged the receiver onto the phone rest. I was too busy on thursday to deal with it so on Friday afternoon, I decided to go to Best Buy MYSELF and complain in person. The tech guy looks my invoice up in the computer, heads to the cabinets to look for my camera, talks to ANOTHER tech guy to help him understand what the computer is saying (TECH GUYS? really?) and then says, again, that the UPS tracking # doesn't indicate incoming or outgoing so he suggested I use their phone to call the customer service line. The guy puts me on hold for 10 minutes, then asked to talk to the tech guy, then advised that he would call the vendor the camera was sent to and by this time i am 5 minutes past my lunch and I still have to drive back to the office. So I give the guy on the phone my number at work and storm out of Best Buy ready to slap the first person I see wearing a royal blue shirt and khakis. I get to work and I have a voicemail message from the customer service guy I spoke with 10 minutes earlier and he says that the vendor is already closed so maybe I should call them on Monday to check the status of my camera. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! For the rest of my workday that afternoon I was speechless and spent.

So I head to the 5:30 mass at Holy Family Church and Father Maurice's homily was all about having faith; having faith that bad things will happen, having faith that they happen for a reason, and having faith that they will be resolved in due time if we just let it go and let what's supposed to happen, happen without getting so upset at everything that comes to us thereafter. After I got home that evening from a rockin' JC Chasez concert at the House of Blues (more details to come), I went to bed and laid everything that happened this week to rest. My camera was somewhere and worst case scenario, they lost it and will replace it. I personally couldn't do anything about the situation but complain and be upset and I was so sick of being that way that I decided to let it be and have faith that it would be okay in the end. All I was sad about was the fact that I wouldn't have it for a christmas party saturday night. Oh well, I said. It's cool.

I was eating breakfast the next morning, Saturday and my grandfather comes in and hands me this thing wrapped in foam paper and bubble packaging. "Here, this was put into our mailbox by mistake yesterday." It was my camera. My first reaction was, "HELLO! Does Best Buy really not know the procedures involved with situations like this?" Then I realized I had my dear digicam in my hand and I shut my mouth. It didn't matter anymore.

Moral of the story: Overreacting will get you nothing but unnecessary anxiety and agitation, which never helps in any situation. Sometimes you just have to have faith that things will be okay in the end. Life is so much calmer when I'm not angry and annoyed. Faith; I'd forgotten all about it.