this morning

E-mail from Immediate Superior: "I will be out this a.m. to look after my wife, who is sick." So, memo to me: yes, people are sometimes not well, and taking time away from work in these instances is -- surprise! -- not inherently irresponsible.

There are a number of factors contributing to the fact that I suspect I will never, ever be really comfortable with this.

On the one hand, there have been a couple of times -- ninth grade was one; my second year in my first job was another -- when, for reasons absolutely having to do with my health, I missed enough days of school or work to do pretty genuine damage. In high school, I fell behind in at least one class and had serious trouble catching up; at work, I spent all my leave and had to take a couple days here and there of leave without pay. I wasn't wrong to stay home when I did, but if I'd got what was going on sorted out sooner, I wouldn't have been in that fix, and of course I'm not eager to be in such a fix again, despite the fact that I haven't been fourteen in more than half a lifetime and I'm in a job now where (a) vacation and sick time don't come out of the same balance, (b) there is plenty of each, and (c) I'm not paid by the hour, so LWOP is not really in the cards anyway. Doesn't matter: the once-bitten, twice-shy hindbrain is nervous.

On the other hand, my parents were public school teachers who, once we were old enough to be left alone, had to be really sick before they stayed home from work, because it was so often so much easier to just go in and suffer than it would have been to arrange for someone to cover for them.

So my sense of the standards of illness sufficient (I started with "necessary", so you see) to keep a person at home and of the consequences of staying away from work are probably skewed.

None of which really makes me feel any better.


In any event, here I am at work today, not dead. Huzzah.

[eta: Of course, the boss's e-mail rather highlights another facet of the whole sick-day thing, which is that I am single and live alone and therefore have nobody taking care of me when I am sick, which is normally no big deal but a serious deficiency when it would be helpful to have someone taking care of me. On the other hand, this may drive a person back to work sooner. Who knows.]

oh! another thing that happened.

Sometimes, late in the month, I take a look at my credit card balance online before deciding whether or not to buy something optional, if I think there's a chance it could vault me to uncomfortable bill-paying places.  So the other day, I was looking at my Visa statement, and I saw a $79 charge to Amazon Prime.

About six weeks ago, see, they were running a promotion where you could try Amazon Prime at no charge for a month, and I thought, hey, a month of free two-day shipping, starting with this 60%-off comforter I'm about to buy?  Sure, I'll take it.  Since there was no obligation to join, great.  And I know what you're thinking:  oh, Fox, those are opt-out arrangements!  But I'm pretty sure I read it carefully and it was an opt-in.  At the very least, it said something about not charging my card without my knowledge or consent.

So, yeah, I was angry.  I cancelled that shit right away and chose the radio button marked "did not intend to sign up".  And I hunted around the customer service site for a phone number I could call, and there was none.  In the "phone" tab, it invited me to input my number and to note whether I'd like them to call me right away, in five minutes, or in fifteen minutes.  So I e-mailed them instead:

I don't want you to call me.  I want to call you.  Please e-mail me with a number I can call.  The issue is that I signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime with the understanding that I would be under no obligation to join the service when the trial period expired.  Instead, WITHOUT ANY WARNING, my card was charged for a full year's membership in Amazon Prime.  I have cancelled this, but I want some assurance that the ENTIRE membership fee will be refunded to me.  Absent this assurance, there is a very good chance that I will never buy anything from Amazon again, and you can be sure I will also be telling others about this underhanded practice.

Consider yourselves told.  :-)  If nothing else, I should have got some sort of message telling me that unless I did something by some time, my card would be charged, right?  Of course right.  But anyway, within twelve hours -- at 11:58, as a matter of fact, hee! -- I got the following response:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Please accept my sincere apologies for the inconvenience you may have experienced.

I have checked your account and see that you have successfully cancelled your Prime membership.

Our records indicate that you have not used your Amazon Prime membership benefits and hence a for a full refund of $79.00 has been generated.

The refund should be processed within the next 2-3 business days and will appear as a credit on your next credit card billing statement.

As you requested, here are our Customer Service Department phone numbers:

U.S. and Canada: 1-866-216-1072
International: 1-206-266-2992

Customer Service is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Please know that we value your business, and we hope to see you again soon at Amazon.com.

And I don't even buy that much stuff from them.  What if I'd been, like, an important customer?  :-)

Anyway, today when I looked the $79 had been credited back to me (and on the same statement as the charge, which pleases me), and I'm keeping this e-mail so next time I won't have to go through the fruitless search for phone numbers.

so i am not normally all about the Doom.

There was a bit on the radio recently that I wouldn't be thinking about except for that I am, and also I've been through the ringer lately trying to make an appointment with a dentist, which I haven't had in over a year (but which I finally did, today, for next Thursday at -- eep -- 8am).

So in the meantime, who would like to assure me that the sore spot on the inside of my upper lip is not an early-stage cancerous leukoplakia?