Deeps Friday Rant No-Communication

[Deep C]

Since I didn't get around to last weeks rant. This week I'm gonna deliver two of them. This is the first...
The hardest thing about pocking a topic is picking which things pissed me off the most in a particular week. The last couple weeks have been a doozie! A virtual mega mall of possible topics. Disobedient teenage kid, bad traffic jams, unfinished odds and ends, financial woes,the list is endless. So deep was it that I had to look past the surface and find a common thread.
I did...
In this world of high tech gadgetry... we have the toys... the means... We have tv with a zillion channels, we have broadband, satellites, radio, we have skype, Att long distance, cell phones, Nextel, these keyboards and these mice. So tell me then... How the hell is it that we suck so badly at On the communicating? We speak the same language but translate the words differently...

My frustration from this weeks lack of communication skills took on several ugly forms... Mini recently scored a perfect score on an entrance exam to a top shelf school and the programs within. She was not accepted. Instead she was tossed on a wait list. This has the potential to change her future education path drasticly... So I dug in. School board, counselors, highly placed officials, etc, all were emailed and phoned. Not one returned message or call. So I got louder until answers started to trickle in.
She had been waitlisted because the course she had scored perfectly had been listed as second choice on her application. No where had it been explained that second choice would exempt you from getting in. It had never been mentioned... Mini failed to communicate that it was second choice to me and the school system failed to communicate to the kids thatsecond choice meant not getting in at all...
So now I have an angry teen pointing fingers at everything but where the problem lies. I got a lecture about why she made that her second choice. She knew she was expected by her mother and I to make that first choice. She wanted to rebel... She wanted to get even... get this... for me being racist??? Huh? I'll continue... Racist because I don't like her friend Ahman who is Indian...
It has nothing to do with ethnicity... I don't like him calling at all hours or while she's doing her homework and I don't like the fact she gave him my soccer balls... Communication gap there too...

Another situation popped up early week. Some billing confusion... I sent emails and placed calls. None were answered. I did a drive by post about it and moved on... My phone rang last evening with the other end hot as a hornet??? Blasting that I posted... No mention of the hundreds of positive posts I have laid out there. At first claimed not to know who sent the email. My fault for not signing? Then he went on to say he replied twice... To a mail he didn't know where it came from? I never got the response and AOL didn't block it??? The phone works... four days later... I pointed out that at the start of something I had made it clear how I wanted my billing done. He said it couldn't be done that way? I'm missing something... Nobody said anything but "yes sir" when I had made my request. Communication break down...
On another area of the same problem I had negotiated a deal. That info had never made its way to him. Still more miscommunication... His call was so full of rant, foaming moth, foul language, etc that that really didn't communicate a thing except that he forgot who the customer is and that we are now both pissed.

Yet more issues communicating popped up with my reel repair guy. I brought him a couple pretty bad ones a week ago. "Just bust em open, clean em up and put em back together..." Yesterday I went in and not done... He wanted to see if I wanted new parts x,y,z??? I thought I said "just clean it up"??? Instead of having a done reel I had a bag of parts. I did the job myself in about 20 minutes... Culprit? ... You got it... No communication...

One for the other side:
Recently I went back to using a mechanic from years back. He has a tough time showing up near on time but the work he does is quick, reasonable and very good... At least he knows to communicate. Last night he called to say he sheared a bolt and work was held up. Today he called and said job was done. So not everybody has a tough time communicating...

[knot for shore]

really sucks that mimi is playing with her future like that and for that reason. kids do the damnest things sometimes! as for the communication matter, i just think people are lazy. their laziness spawns assumptions that "it doesn't really matter what happens in the end" mentalities.