A whole day of packing. Oh joy. My break from it all is aerobics and Pilates. Hmm. That's not strictly speaking what I'd put in the 'fun' category... Well, on Monday night I did have the luxury of going out for a meal with the cowboy. Even though it felt as hot as Las Vegas that day. Reports say it was something stupid like 38 degrees..! No wonder I made pretty slow progress with packing that day.
I don't think the cowboy really realises what's involved in packing your things up and putting them all into boxes. Especially when you're self-employed. I'm not just packing up my home. I'm packing up my office too. Which means reams and reams of papers to sort through and files to organise as well as books and photo albums and clothes and stationery things to put into boxes. (Preferably labelled boxes so I can find it all again.) Thankfully, it was a stormy night last night and the temperature in Prague has dropped a bit, but it's still very hard work to get through the day with no air-conditioning.
It's hard to deal with all of the bits and pieces from the past as well and I don't like having to decide which letters and cards and things to keep. By and large I'm being quite ruthless and just chucking everything out unless I really use it, but I'm not so good at being ruthless with pictures. I have a big box of pictures alone. I need to cut back on those. My trouble is, I haven't grown out of the teenage habit of sticking pictures up on the wall with blu-tack. So I can hang on to pictures easily, knowing I will indeed put them up on the wall again and change them over every few months. I'm also somewhat disheartened by the number of files of boring admin type stuff like bank account info, tax forms and accounting things in general. How is it possible that these things can take up so much room when I've got virtually no money in those damned accounts anyway? Isn't it preposterous?
I actually had a very funny letter from the bank here the other week. My Czech bank has decided that I am a "valued customer" because I have been with them two years and so they want to invite me to come into a branch and...collect a free photo frame. Wow. That's got to be one of the lamest rewards a bank could give out. This is a bank who charge me a fee for every little transaction I have to make including standing orders and direct debits, cash machine withdrawals, phone top-ups and so on. And the best they can do is a free photo frame that I actually have to go in to collect? What is the world coming to? I know the Czech Republic isn't exactly renowned for its customer service skills but this is just ridiculous. I would feel less disgusted with them if they hadn't offered me a measly photo frame but had announced instead that they were stopping all the fees on my current standing orders. Obviously, I am not that "valued" a customer afterall.
I'm wondering why I'm bothering to carefully pack my things up anyway. I fear the cowboy will either have a heart attack when he sees how much stuff I have or will have an almighty fit of rage at me at some point that this is all too much and just throw it out of the window. He's never had to do this, so is unfamiliar with the concept that moving house is incredibly stressful, fraught with emotional consequences and generally takes a long time to do. He was hoping we could take the majority of boxes over to his tomorrow night so that I would be free to help him finish putting up some doors on cupboards in his flat in the mountains for him this weekend. When I mentioned that this was the last weekend I would actually have before having to officially be out of my flat, he said, "What, you're STILL going to be packing things?" As though during the final weekend before moving out it is actually possible not to still be packing things.
I don't know what planet he was born on, but it's obviously not the same one as me. I come from a place where if something is an ongoing problem, you just grit your teeth and see it through to the end. You don't try to pretend it's not happening and run off for a weekend in the mountains. You might run off round the corner for a much needed frappuccino and chocolate muffin from time to time, but that's different. The good news there though is that I just got a voucher for a free frappuccino whenever I next fancy one for filling out a questionnaire online about the behaviour and service of the staff on my most recent 'visit'.
I don't think I was particularly complimentary about the staff because in fact, that day I had not had a particularly great experience with them, because they've got into that habit of asking your name and writing it on the cup (which I find a bit irritating) and I insisted on checking her spelling of my name, because I told her in Czech and I wanted to be sure that she'd understood my pronunciation, and she looked at me like I was wasting time. But I figured it was already wasting time to write everyone's name on the damned cups in the first place, so you may as well spell it right, you know? But anyway, it doesn't matter. I still have a freebie waiting for me thanks to my diligence as a customer who fills in questionnaires. Hmm. I should become a customer service advisor. Or consultant. A customer service consultant. That sounds better. More scope to be an arrogant arse with the title, 'consultant'. I'm sure I'd be ever so good at it and I'd at least give people actual value for money rewards for their custom. Free coffees from cafes. And, accordingly, free money from banks. Not photo frames.
No comments:
Post a Comment