I guess these are all small things, but oh so annoying.
I am heading over to see A Strange Loop at Soulpepper on Sat. I think I'll find it interesting, though I am definitely not the target audience, and indeed I generally am not that big on musicals in the first place, with a few key exceptions. Anyway, what was not made clear (or at least I definitely missed it) is this is such a challenging role that the lead is taking off every Wed. and Sat. matinee! (Honestly, that feels a bit extreme.) Of course, I had already booked a ticket for a Sat. matinee and thought, well I really ought to switch that. There was a bit of a hassle, and I had to downgrade my seats a bit, but I managed to get this done. And then after I thought everything was settled, a different person from the Box Office wrote me back saying that there was an $8 ticket transfer fee. I wrote back a pretty salty email, saying that this was part of a subscription, as well as I thought it was misleading to not have the lead actually in every performance, and I would never have booked that date in the first place, etc. I guess I just really was annoyed by the constant nickle and diming, esp. as the original person I was talking with did not mention an extra fee. They ended up just sending me the ticket without collecting the extra fee, though maybe I used up all of my karma for the week.
I had recently put in an order from Dusty Groove. It's quite a decent jazz store in Chicago, and they do a good job with shipping items, even internationally. I definitely miss dropping in on the store, which I used to do all the time while living in Chicago. At any rate, I ended up putting in an order. Normally I ship to a friend still living in Chicago, but I won't be going back to Chicago any time soon, so I investigated the cost to ship up to Toronto. It definitely cost more but not a ridiculous amount more, and this was offset by not paying Illinois sales tax. However, when the package arrived, it was over the de minimus limit (which was supposed to be raised in any event), and I ended up paying $20 extra dollars in GST. Which makes it that much less likely I'll be ordering again from them in the near future. Darn it...
But the most annoying has to be this poster I was working on for a conference that was in town. First off, I was never granted permission to go, even though I had the poster accepted and it was just down the street. So that really dampened my enthusiasm. Then my hours supporting the other conference activities were cut substantially, and I ended up having to do the research for the poster on my own time, which understandably started to drag... I did finally pull all the data and putting the poster together (pretty late at night), but I was also disheartened by the fact that the data didn't line up with what I was expecting to see, which made it particularly hard to come up with any punchy findings. So generally it was a disappointment all the way around. Anyway, I finally got it done, though far too close to the conference deadline, but then I needed to actually print the poster. I uploaded it to the Staples website after asking someone who said it would be ready the next day. Well, they definitely gave me bad advice. The next day I waited quite some time and then finally started calling in the afternoon, but I never managed to talk with anyone in the print shop. The conference had already started by this point!
This morning I decided enough was enough, and I biked over in the morning, only to find that the poster still wasn't done. However, if I forked over another $20, they would turn it into a rush job, and I would have it in about 30 minutes. So I did that, though with very poor grace. I think next time I will just go to The Printing House instead, which is just a bit further up University Ave.
So just a few of the many interactions leaving me annoyed these days...
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