Consistent, straight answers are really all I ask from any business I patronize. I’m not always going to be able to get what I want, and that’s fine; just tell me that at the beginning of a situation and neither of us will waste our time.
I’ve got two Visa cards, one from Bank of America and one not. I’ve had both cards for several years, and been reasonably happy with them; two from two different banks seems like plenty to me. A couple years ago, though, I started to notice the odd merchant that only took MasterCard; conveniently, though, BofA offers MasterCards as well, so I decided to inquire about whether my Visa could simply be converted. Same credit line, same account age, same bank, same everything but the account number and logo at the lower right. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Thursday, 5 July: My landlord orders a dishwasher on BestBuy.com for delivery and installation on Wednesday, 11 July. In an e-mail message to her after the order is placed, they claim that delivery and installation must be done on separate days: Wednesday and Thursday.
Friday, 6 July: Not wanting to take two separate days off work, I call Best Buy and speak with a gentleman in Appliance Installation and Delivery who helpfully reschedules both to the same day; timeframe’s still not available until the day before, but at least I’m limited to only 8 possible hours off work. Apparently stores can schedule same-day installation and delivery, but the website schedules them separately at first. No harm done, though; everything’s set for Wednesday, and I’ll get the timeframe call on Tuesday.
Tuesday, 10 July, noon: The Baltimore delivery warehouse leaves a message: they’ll be delivering between 5:30 and 7:30 PM Wednesday. Obviously, this is not compatible with same-day installation. I call them back; they can’t reschedule, but inform me that installation will in fact take place on Thursday, as originally stated in the e-mail. In this amusing saga, I’m told that store orders are always scheduled for same-day delivery and installation, BestBuy.com orders are always scheduled for separate days, and no one is capable of making a change to convert the two post-order placement. The warehouse associate freely admits to this being silly, and claims it’s being worked on at corporate. We scramble to rearrange work schedules so one of us can be home on Thursday instead of during the day on Wednesday.
Tuesday, 3:45 PM: An auto-dialer from the installation department calls to inform me that installation is scheduled for Wednesday between 2 and 6 PM. Installation before delivery, eh? Neat trick. I call the installation department back; they suggest getting delivery to reschedule. I try delivery again; they say no dice. I call installation back, they say they can’t reschedule until Friday. In case you’re counting, this is now the third distinct installation/delivery schedule offered. Told that I’ll be able to get a Friday slot no matter when I call back today, I decide to hold my 2-6 Wednesday slot for the moment and see what a few phone calls can do.
…to the police, first responders, and EMTs on-site, and the trauma staff at Montgomery Regional, NRV, Lewis-Gale, and Roanoke Memorial. Fast, courageous and skilled work saved lives.
…to the administration, for handling an unforeseeable tragedy with immense dignity, and the resumption and close of the semester and academic year with sympathy and integrity.
…to Nikki Giovanni, not just for bringing this university off the edge of despair, but for exercising restraint. Giovanni is decidedly leftist, and originally included two lines critical of the war in Iraq in her poem; she reconsidered those lines out of respect for President Bush’s presence at the university convocation. At a time in which many were rushing to turn tragedy into political points, she held back. And, by the way, the message got through if you were listening for it — which, I guess, is what makes her a poet.
…to the current students. I was as guilty of low expectations as anybody else — on Monday, I usually cringed and turned the volume down when CNN or Fox News announced another student was calling in from Blacksburg. But when I started listening, you guys were handling yourselves incredibly well — intelligent, well-spoken, and thoughtful overall, and keeping your cool under total siege. You made us all proud.
The toughest thing is the people who don’t understand.
Before it was rewritten under a night-shift editorial staff determined to further brutalize the situation, an insightful column by the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews described not just Virginia Tech’s up-and-coming public image, but the sense of unity there. As best I can recall, his original words mentioned that though the small-town location can occasionally be the subject of jokes around campus, the geographic isolation breeds a tight-knit community among those in Blacksburg, and nearly unmatched loyalty from those who have moved on (not to mention the fifty thousand who come back seven weekends every fall). Other schools have fans, sometimes an entire state full of them. We have the Hokie Nation — we are the Hokie Nation. And though that devotion may seem corny or even misplaced at times, my first thought at work when hearing the news was: who here is a Hokie? And when I realized there weren’t any around as the news got worse, it was time to leave.
SI.com’s Stewart Mandel came closest to that respectful tone in the Post’s stead, describing his own shock at seeing the campus he’s used to wandering in brief interludes during big game coverage appear so out of context. Blacksburg, to him, is a place you come for a vacation from the real world, and to some extent that’s been true.
But it’s even simpler than that for me. Blacksburg isn’t just a place I lived, or the dateline on my diploma, or a fall football destination, or where my brother goes to school, or even where I met my wife. It’s my home, and the people walking across campus in shock, or on the dais at a press conference trying to describe indescribable horrors, are my family.
