I’m Writin’ Mad
I admit that sometimes I go off on rants here, and they are mostly good natured, in jest, in kinda-jest, or not in jest at all, but completely irrelevant to anyone at all. Today though a couple of things irked me to the point that I’m going beyond ranting on a website, but will also be writing letters (well, emails at least) to those involved.
- First is the fact I had to step over a bum walking to my car from the train this afternoon. I have sympathy for the down and out, I really do, and I have enough guilt that I put probably more money than I should in the various hats, cups and plates stuck under my nose on a daily basis. It’s really not just the fact that some guy was asleep stretched out over most of the stair on the walkway from the train station to the parking lot. It’s that, plus the guy asleep under the walkway last week (same guy maybe?) and the groups of kids who commonly gather without regard for the commuters coming home after a long day of work who may not want to navigate through their gaggle of “look at us, we’re cool rebellious teens!” in the walkway. It’s also the graffiti that’s all over the walkway and station, which used to be cleaned up and painted over before the city gave up, and that three of four different occassions in the last year a plate or two of the no doubt very expensive glass was broken by (I’m assuming) kids horsing around and doing damage just for shits and giggles.
I (vaugly) remember what it’s like to be a kid and no doubt did all sorts of stupid things in my youth (none of which I’ll detail here as my parents make up at least 1 of the 4 readers of this page). I grew up in a small town and no doubt got just as bored as people in mission do when you’re young and have nothing to do.
I’m proud of this town. I’ve lived here four years and enjoy the small town feel, good environment (for the most part anyway) and overall “good feel” of the town. However, the train station though is the first thing that a lot of visitors see when they visit the city, and I’m embarrassed that the first thing they should see is a bum sleeping on the stairs, or a bunch of kids rudely blocking their path. I hope I find the proper outlet to vent on (probably by phone as there isn’t a mayoral email address I can see).
- ICBC. F-n IC-F-n-BC. Argh. So after my little fender bender the other week I got a letter from ICBC saying “you’re 100% at fault.” OK, sucks to be me, so I call them and put in an impassioned plea and appeal the decision. I give a statement to a nice lady (Nice Lady #1) with all the details that I could.
Fast forward a week or three. I get a call from another nice lady (Nice Lady #2) saying that she’s looked over my statement and feels that I shouldn’t be 100% at fault, and that the file needs to be sent to some internal process, or higher up the chain (or something) for review and will (most likely, I understand there’s no guarantee) come back with a “not 100% at fault” decision. This costs $50 to me, but that will be waived if the 100%-my-fault decision comes back changed (which again, she thinks it would be). At this point it sounds good to me, $50 is way better than the loss of some of my safe driver discount and all that other stuff.
Fast forward another week or so, now last thursday or so. I get a call from now a different nice lady (let’s be original and call her Nice Lady #3), who I presume is calling to get information about the case, or review things, ask questions, something like that. She starts talking about sending case notes to me for review, which confuses me a lot (not hard to do). After a fairly confusing phone conversation I’m able to gleam that the “internal review” is for ICBC to look at things and see if they did their job right, and also an opportunity for me to have the case reviewed by a third party (a lawyer I guess?). She also tells me that if Nice Lady #2 thought that the decision was wrong, she had the opportunity to change it right then and there, and there was no need to send anything off for any review, which is for some other reason (I think). The conversation ended with Nice Lady #3 saying she was going to talk to Nice Lady #2 about this (and from her tone of voice, rip her head off) and get back to me.
So now it’s another few days later with no word from anyone. Maybe I can get a “no fault” decision by default, or ICBC incompetence?
