Well! I never!
I opened my mail this morning and found a letter from the City of Toronto. Curious! It was a parking ticket for $76 for an infraction on Yonge St. in downtown Toronto in early June. What!!!!
I don’t know what this is about, but I know the car was not in downtown Toronto in June, or at any other time. The last time we visited downtown Toronto was years and years ago, and even then we were nowhere near Yonge St.
What pisses me off is that now the onus is on me to either pay the ticket or dispute it. I called them, got transferred around until they hung up on me. I called them again, got transferred around until they hung up on me. I called a third time and finally found a human voice, a person who said the fine was paid and the car was a Mazda, my car is not a Mazda, I did not pay the fine. She gave me another number to call, and that fellow told me the fine had not been paid, the car ticketed was a Mazda, that I needed to send my documentation and proof to the dispute department by email. &*%#&(, they decide to mail me a ticket from out of nowhere, and now I have to produce PROOF that they made a mistake, and then they will CONSIDER my case. So, I wrote an email message with the details, and sent it to them.
This is harassment in my view, that some idiot can decide to mail out false tickets and then people have to struggle to get it straightened out, or pay the $76 fine, plus an additional $40 if you are late with your payment. Some people would find it easier just to pay the darn ticket, but quite frankly I am not in an income bracket to have that kind of money STOLEN out of my pocket by some idiot bureaucrat.
It is all well and good to make mistakes, but when the bureaucracy is so calcified in inefficiency that the mistake cannot be easily remedied, well, it amounts to small scale harassment, in my view.
And while I am complaining, I will add my recent experience with the Scarborough Hospital. When I found out that my brother had collapsed with a heart attack and was taken to that hospital, I called to find out how he was doing, and when I could come to see him. The woman who answered the call told me that he had been brought in, but that “he left”. A long drawn out interaction ensued as she insisted that “he left”, and I insisted that he was unconscious and could not have possibly left, and that she needed to find him! It was more than ten minutes of assertive discussion on my part before she finally discovered that he had been transferred to another hospital ICU, still unconscious. Good God! Shame on them for the insensitive ignorance in dealing with the family of a fatally ill patient.
OK, this kind of baloney happens in threes. That is two down, one to go. It will come from out of nowhere, and take me by surprise. But I know it is coming, the universe is on that roll of three, currently one of insensitive, officious bureaucracies.
I had better check the due dates on my library books! No, wait, I would love that number three was a small fine on overdue library books!
Today is outrageously hot, and humid. It is just past noon and already the humidex is 41C, which is 105.8 F. Yikes, the peak of the day’s heat isn’t even here yet.
I did go for my walk this morning, very early, 6:30 a.m., and it wasn’t too bad. By the time the dishwasher was delivered mid-morning, it was blistering hot out there. The delivery fellows were very nice, they delivered our washer and dryer last year, so they found us without any problem. They unpacked the unit and it looked fine, so I took delivery. Lets hope it is a good unit.
Well, I am going to end this entry with the third pending bureaucratic misery still hanging mysteriously over my head.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
34°C
Date: 12:00 PM EDT Thursday 11 August 2016
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 28.2°C
Dewpoint: 20.4°C
Humidity:62%
Wind:S 22 km/h
Humidex: 41 (105.8)
Quote
“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948
[Hear that Toronto bureaucrats! I am purifying my thoughts, so watch out!]
