Extremely Lame

I have wanted a laptop for some time. For the longest time, I had a desire to drink the Flavor Aid* and get a MacBook Pro, partly because of Vista sucking so bad, but mostly because of how stabby Windows Genuine Advantage makes me. WGA is Microsoft’s anti-piracy update that has targeted millions of computers running legitimate copies of Windows and flagging it as pirated.

Unfortunately, the sticker shock compelled me to do otherwise. I just couldn’t drop that kind of cash on a laptop all at once. I finally decided to get a laptop after seeing a pretty slick deal at Office Depot with twelve months of no interest to boot.

Boy, what a mistake that turned out to be. I went there early Friday evening and tried to set up a credit account so I could capitalize on the no interest. I’d have it paid off before the deal ran out, and in the meantime, I’d use that extra money that I have now to pay off the things I am paying interest on. Win win all around, yes? Wrong. When trying to get to the account, it spits out some reference number and a phone number to call. When the lady at the register calls them up, she gets a message saying that they’re closed since it’s after 8PM EST. This is despite the page with the reference number saying they’re open from 8A-3A Monday through Saturday.

On Saturday, I go back to see if this can be resolved. No no no. They’re closed on the weekends.

I wait until Monday daytime. This is when things get really interesting. The poor girl (oddly enough, the same one as the previous three days) was on the phone for over an hour being bounced from one person to another. First, the number that was spit out for her to call was the wrong number, which explains the discrepancy on when they were open. She called six different numbers that day, having to endure both being on hold and my growing exasperation.

Eventually she just hit a loop where the last number she called referred her back to one of the other phone numbers that she’d already called. At that point, I apologized to her and left.

You know, getting denied for credit wouldn’t have bothered me. For some reason, I have bad credit even though all my bills have been paid on time and in full for the entirety of the twenty-first century to date. However, because you instead wanted to jerk me around for a few hours over the course of three days, when I do have enough for a laptop in about a week and a half, I sure as hell ain’t going to be buying it from Office Despot.

*contrary to popular belief, a number of scholars believe it was grape Flavor Aid that was used at Jonestown, not Kool-Aid.