Chapter 547 of "I am not a nice person and I am easily provoked"

I yelled at the carpet cleaning man today.

Since we're officially out of the temporary apartment this Friday, I had to arrange for professional carpet cleaning. It felt like a big waste-o-money since we only lived there for two and a half weeks, but whatever. Rules are rules. It took me no fewer than 12 phone calls to different carpet cleaning companies before I found one where the person answering the phone WASN'T an asshole, so I was already irritated about the whole process. Who knew that people who cleaned carpets for a living were such jerks to prospective customers?

Anyway, I also had to mop, sweep, and generally clean things before we checked out, so I got to the apartment around noon. Ate a little lunch, cleaned, and settled down with a good book to wait for the carpet guys to come out.

I waited, and waited, and waited.

Finally, 5 minutes before the end of the window of time they'd told me to be at the apartment, I called J and asked him to give me the company's number. Were they coming or not? I got ahold of the guy, and it turned out that he was still 10 minutes away. Ten minutes isn't a big deal, but DUDE, if you're going to be late, CALL ME! It's not like he didn't have a cell phone, and especially since he wasn't even going to arrive until after the window had expired, the least he could have done was to give me a call from his last job (and they had my cell number--it was written right on the order form I had to sign after I paid him) to let me know that he'd be a little late.

I let him have it. Told him that if he was going to be late, he should have called me, the customer, to make sure that I was still going to be there. I really got more upset than the situation warranted, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who are late and expect me to just sit around twiddling my thumbs until they arrive.

The guy arrived, I let him in and barked a few things about an enzymatic cleaner they needed to use because we have cats, blah, blah, blah, and then we didn't talk again until he was done 30 minutes later. I handed him the check, ushered him out the door, and drove home still pissed off.

I don't know. This is the third time in the last week that I've lost my cool at someone this way. First at P.F. Chang's where the kitchen screwed up our order and our server avoided us for 45 minutes rather than fix the problem, then at the P/X (base shopping center) for a variety of reasons all involving a coffee table I want, and now this. Maybe I need to work on my anger management.