Hanging on the telephone...

This morning I have been enlivening my life by sticking around in telephone hell. Three simple tasks, all frustrated to greater or lesser extent by incompetency, bureaucracy, stupid rules, laziness, and automatic telephone systems.

1. Pay off old bill. Found out by inspection of a credit report that I had some outstanding charge from a gas company that my housemates had neglected to pay off while they were still living there (I moved out early). Resign self to paying the trifling amount. Attempt to pay off this amount. Get the phone call run around: call one number, get redirected to another number. Call them. They don't have the account any more, it was taken back. And so on. I want to give these people money. Is it really so hard for them to accept it? Still haven't managed to pay it off yet.

2. Get what I paid for. In March: order some computer gubbins. Package arrives, containing wrong (and cheaper) gubbins. After several weeks, finally get an RMA number and return the item. Now, call company repeatedly to try to get acknowledgement that they have some intention of sending the correct item. Get to sit through two minutes of recorded announcements and menus before being dropped into voicemail. Repeatedly. Yawn.

3. Try to get a driving licence. People repeatedly express amazement that I can live in New Jersey and don't drive. It turns out that it is bureaucratically impossible for me to get a licence here. In order to get a licence, I need to get a permit from the DMV. Of course, I'm not allowed to go to the local service center, because I am an alien, and therefore dangerous. So I call up to see if anyone in DMV central knows what I have to do (of course, the charming website has no information about any of this, but experience of friends tells me that I can't trust their lies). It turns out that you can't get a new licence if you have less than 1 year remaining on your visa. And, my visa is issued 1 year at a time. So in fact, it is not possible for me to break through this bureaucracy and get a permit, and hence not possible for me to drive in New Jersey, until I get a new visa with more than one year on it. Roll on the H1-B, I say.