You might would think that what I hate about my job would be something like belly-crawling in a muddy crawlspace, trying to fish wiring under a home after a rain storm. Or perhaps working your way across rafters as you move through itchy-itchy insulation from one side of a 135 degree attic to the other. Or perhaps it would be when a 3-inch hole saw grabs an edge wrong and the giant drill kicks back and punches you in the face over and over until all you can do is think “Oh! A wise guy! Nyuck-nyuck-nyuck!” Or when you’ve forced on SO many fittings onto the end of uncooperative stiffy RG6 cabling that your fingertips are bleeding and kind of a weird silver color. Or when you've squatted behind an audio rack so long that BOTH your legs go to sleep and that when you go to stand up you topple over. Or when you are all packed up to leave a job at the end of the day and the customer comes running our with, "Oh! Just one more thing..."

But, no. It would be none of these things. (Though, to be fair, they DO suck. Especially that drill-to-face thing.)

It would be dealing with lameness. Usually when there is something I hate about my job, it is entirely human related. Frequently caused by my own staff by either forgetting to do something and then me having to pick up the ball, apologize and correct it, or by DOING something that I have to apologize for and correct. Another prime cause of lameness is overly self-important clients who think that the world actually DOES spin around them. That we are simply here for their amusement and that our schedules are merely hovering around in the strata waiting for them to bless us with an opening in their Blackberry.

But today’s bit of lameness comes courtesy of a $397 Denon receiver. This receiver broke back in September and we shipped it off to United Radio for repair. And once a week since then the customer has been calling, “Where is my receiver?” “What have you heard about my receiver?” “When are you coming to reinstall my receiver?” “I need to get my receiver.”

So I dutifully call and check up on the receiver. “We’re waiting on parts.” “Parts are shipping.” “The parts have arrived and the tech is scheduled to work on them.” “Those parts didn’t fix the problem. We’re ordering more parts.”

I just got off the phone with United Radio and they are now calling this a “progressive repair.” Though, to be honest, it doesn't seem to really be progressing at all. More like they repair one problem to progress to the point where they can then discover another. And then restart the clock on “We’re waiting on parts...” So the next batch of parts isn’t even scheduled to ship until next week. Then there is shipping time. Then there is tech schedule time. Then – if that actually fixes the problem, which, since we’re 0 for 3 so far, I’m not betting highly on – the shipping time back to me. And then the scheduling of the reinstall.

So I tell the tech that at best case scenario we won’t get the unit back until early November which will mean the customer has been without it for almost 2 months and I ask at what point we just tell Denon they need to scrap this unit and order a replacement. Tech says that this will only delay the process further.

Well can you call Denon and ask them to overnight the parts to you? I *guess* I can do that.

And then he tells me that some of the reason why this is taking so long is that they had to wait on us to provide a proof of warranty. So I asked him, “This unit has a two year warranty, right?” “Yes it does.” “This product hasn’t even existed for two years, so you KNEW that it would be under warranty, right?” “Well…” “I mean just a LITTLE BIT of common sense on your end would have told you that it had to be under warranty, right, since it hasn’t even existed for two years. So you probably could have used a little logic and initiative and proceeded with seeing what was wrong with it. Right?”

Wrong.

So now I get to call the customer and tell them that there will be no music in October. And that is why I am hating my job today.