fire drill

I took a train earlier today from Dijon (France) back to Zurich. After a 5-hour ride, I went to dinner with some coworkers. I got back to my hotel after that and checked my email at 9pm CET. I had a 15-minute-old Google Voice transcript from the guys who were supposed to deliver our furniture. I checked the timezones, and it was 12pm PST. They were supposed to come between 1-4pm, and they were going to arrive at 12:15pm. Plus, I had called earlier in the week and specifically told them to call D on his cell, not me on mine. WTF?

I quickly dashed off an email to D hoping that he would check his phone even though he was supposed to be at basketball until 12:30pm. I then tried calling him using the "call" function inside of Gmail for the first time ever...straight to voicemail. I must have tried ten times before I realized it was useless and called the delivery people instead. They seemed very confused. "Where are you? Belmont?" "No, Switzerland!" Finally I told them that D would be there at 1pm, even though I couldn't confirm that because I had no way to reach him. Unfortunately the furniture delivery company and the furniture making company are not the same company, and according to the delivery guys, they were not told to come between 1-4pm, they were merely told to deliver today. ARGH.

I was really afraid they weren't going to wait, so I called our friend up the street who has a key to our house. No dice. I randomly complained to another friend online, but she lives over 30 minutes away and doesn't have a key. Finally I tried again and got the first friend, and he said he'd head over. I took a quick shower to rinse the train smell off, got back online, and found out that he had gone down there only to find no one there. I then asked his wife to call the delivery guys and figure out what was up. They had gone to lunch. Of course.

I heard that in the end they came back and D met them there, but I'm still in Switzerland and I still have no idea what happened. Anyway, this whole episode just stressed me out to a stupid degree. I know delivery guys are always late, but since when do they show up EARLY? I hate the service industry.