For those of you who don't know what Verizon is, it's the phone monopoly up here on the right side of America. Contrary to public opinion, it's not evil, it's just stupid. If it was a person, it would be a five ton baby, approximately the size of a house clumsily staggering about, not very certain what motor reflexes are supposed to do.

Our phone line went out sometime on Saturday. I called Verizon and they said that they'd send someone out on Monday. I gave them my work number to call if they needed to contact me. Monday came around and no calls to my work number. Obviously it's fixed, right?

I get home from work and the phone line is still dead!

So I call them using my cell phone, and they said that someone was out on Sunday (Sunday!) to fix the problem, but the problem was inside the house. Instead of calling my contact number or even coming around the building to knock on the door, they just decided to leave.

That's right, they just went away and didn't reschedule anyone to come out and fix anything.

So I scheduled someone to come out yesterday. The guy who showed up just happened to be the same guy who came out several months ago when our phone went out.

[About that time: This guy was the eighth or ninth person to come out at that time. Our phone service was out for three weeks. During that time, I was waiting on job offers, my sister-in-law was going into labor at any moment, and some other must-have-access-to-communication-device thing was going on. During that time, I read that Verizon had received more complaints in the year to date than they had in the previous year. A Verizon spokesperson even placed the blame on their customers rather on themselves, saying that the customers expect things to be fixed right away.]

Back to the guy who arrived on Tuesday. He's an outside guy. He looks at the connections outside and sees that it's an outside problem. He fixes the phone.

Why couldn't the guy who worked outside on Sunday fix the phone line yet the guy who worked outside on Tuesday could?

Not that it mattered. Our phone died about four hours later.

So now, I've got someone supposedly coming out today, while I'm at work, because it has to be an outside problem and if it isn't, the guy should call me at work today. If I don't get a call at work and the phone isn't fixed, I might start using vulgarities on the phone to the hapless customer service rep.

Oh-- that's not the best part! So I was on the phone with the repair people, and I've got an order in to change our phone service to this "Premium Package" on Thursday... And the guy says -- he actually says this -- that sometimes when they change some service on a line (such as signing up for DSL), they turn your phone off for a few hours when they're making the changes!

At that point, I should have asked to speak to a supervisor. First of all, that's a lie. They don't turn your phone off to change your service. Secondly, if they did, there was no literature available about that procedure in either the phone book, my monthly bill, or on their website. Thirdly, that change wasn't supposed to be effective for two days. Even if that is how they would work to get Caller ID installed on my phone service, they wouldn't turn off my phone service for TWO DAYS!

I've got DSL! They didn't have to turn my phone off to hook that up. It's not as if they've got to splice wires. It's a change in billing!

Therefore, I nominate Verizon to be the official corporate sponsor of Stupid Day.

-Faux "Hey! My phone service is fix-- *click*" Pas