"Verizon Wireless" and "Customer Service" - Two Mutually Exclusive Concepts

I just returned from wasting the second hour in two days waiting for customer "service" at my local Verizon Wireless store. I think if Samuel Beckett was still alive he should re-name his novella Waiting for Godot to Waiting for Verizon.

For about the last week I have been unable to receive emails on my Blackberry. I'm not sure what button I touched to make this happen but it happened. I have searched all the application icons on the Blackberry and simply cannot find one that allows me to reload email onto the phone.

Logic dictates that because this is a Verizon Blackberry and I pay Verizon a hefty sum every month to use their Blackberry and receive my email and since part of that hefty sum goes to pay for customer service, that visiting a Verizon Wireless store would be the logical place to receive that customer service.

In the case of Sarasota, Florida, guess again.

Last night I stood in line a little over an hour waiting for my name to come up on the check-in board as the person to be helped. I was 13th in line and there were three people doing customer service. After an hour I said intercourse it and came home. I thought I would return tonight at an earlier hour and maybe get some customer service.

Guess again.

Tonight I arrived there at 5:45 p.m. and promptly signed in for phone trouble shooting. There were 8 people ahead of me on the sign-in board plus two others receiving customer service from the alleged customer service agents behind the counter. I will say up front that one of the customer service agents was dealing with a man who could best be described as dumb as a rock. She should get a bonus for working with this idiot. But I digress.

As I stood around waiting for my name to be called, four more people came in and signed up for assistance after I did. Two of these people apparently knew how the system works because they were standing in the right place when customers left the service desk and these people who arrived after me were taken care of. Their names were never called or were any of the names on the sign in board removed.

Nope. They just were in the right place at the right time. The rest of us stood around with our fingers in our ears waiting for a flood of customer service to begin.

Guess again.

Disgusted and fed up after wasting 1 hour and 15 minutes to get customer service from Verizon Wireless I said intercourse it again and left. I was still number 8 on the list of people waiting for help.

Being a glutton for punishment and also wanting to get the service that I'm paying Verizon to provide me I will return tomorrow to this Verizon Wireless and hope that some miracle will happen and I'll get some customer service. I will bring a book to read this time - maybe one of Michner's mega productions with 900 pages in it. If the last two nights are any indication I'll likely finish the book before my name gets called.