Grouchy

There is a phenomenon that occurs once in a blue moon at dental school: two major exams happen to fall in the same week. These days, while they are taxing and often frustrating, often turn out to be my favorites. Why? Because these are the days that try men's souls. (Meaning: These are the days where my formerly mild-mannered companions turn into grumbling, complaining, erupting, angry children.)

For example, today as I walked into class my friend Christian jokingly asked my friend Matt an extremely difficult and pointless question from our reading: "What is the square root of the root surface of a maxillary central incisor?" Matt answered, "Your mom."

Soon after this exchange, my unbelievably sweet friend, Amy, began a tirade against our professor that ended in "...and I just don't care. It doesn't make sense, and I don't care. If it was important, I would care, but it's not--so I just don't care. And I'll tell our teacher that, too."

Obviously, she won't tell our teacher that, but to see her so angry was a new experience!

Carly came in and reached an immediate 10 on the anger scale because the student in front of her put her stuff in the way of Carly's feet. Normally that would lead to some frustration and mild annoyance, but today it meant an entire face-turning-red, frantic-wide-eyed, angrily whispered complaint to me at the audacity of blocking her footrest.

It's like my entire class stepped into Clark Kent's phone booth and came out as super villains instead of super heroes.

Strangely, I find all this quite entertaining, so I'm having a wonderful day (at least until the test...that's where my anger starts).

In other news, yesterday I did an online chat with Time Warner Cable because on Saturday while Jeffrey and I were watching one of the March Madness basketball games, our cable and internet suddenly went out. It had just been set up on Tuesday, so we were pretty frustrated that it had cut out so soon. Jeffrey exclaimed, "I NEEEEEED the cable to be on! It's March Madness!" I said, "No, I need the internet on...I have to download study materials for my tests!"

We were out of town on Sunday, so it took us until yesterday to talk to the company. Here's how it went:

TWC: Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. You are next in the queue.
Me: Waiting...
TWC: Hello. My name is Amy Smith, and I'm here to help you today.
Me: (Thinking: there's no way this person's name is Amy Smith. It's probably a 13 year old boy in Pakistan reading off a script.) Hi, Amy. Our cable and internet aren't working.
TWC: Thank you for your input. Let me access your account.
Me: (Thinking: ok, now I think I might just be talking to a computer instead of a 13 year old boy.)
TWC: Thank you for your patience.
Me: You're welcome? It was like 30 seconds of waiting...
TWC: Would you like one of our maintenance agents to come to your home to fix your connection?
Me: Yes, please.
TWC: Thank you for your patience. We can have someone there around 5 pm.
Me: Perfect.
(This next part appeared literally 2 seconds after I typed in "perfect")
TWC: Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable for your high speed cable and internet needs. We will be coming to your home to fix your connection today, March 22, 2010 between 5-7 pm. Please make sure that a responsible party at least 18 years old is at the home at the time of the appointment and can stay the entire time that the maintenance agent is there. If this is a problem, we can reschedule the appointment immediately.

At the end of this live chat you will have a chance to fill out a survey on your satisfaction with our customer service. We would appreciate your feedback on this experience, and remind you that your responses will be kept completely confidential. Thank you for using Time Warner Cable live chat.

Me: (Yeah...really sure that was a live chat. Little Amy Smith/13 year old Pakistani boy just typed 4000 words per minute to do that immediately.) Thanks.
TWC: Thank you for your patience.
Me: Stop saying that.
TWC: Goodbye.

When the guy came to our house, he described the problem to us: "See, we have auditors who go around and make sure nobody has illegally connected to the cable lines, and your account was really new so they thought you were just somebody who connected illegally, so they cut your feed."

Really good communication , communications company.