My New Hero

Forget Peter Petrelli and the Haitian--or any of the superpowered cast of characters on the NBC hit show, Heroes. I don't even think Sylar could stand up to the righteous indignation of this 75 year old woman with a hammer...Check out this story in the Washington Post about Mona Shaw who became so irate at her cable providers ineptitude and lack of customer service that she attacked their call center with a hammer--bashing computer keyboards and monitors and telephones.

Just last week, I spent an hour trying to get T-mobile to honor the rebate they promised when I signed up for service. Called the rebate center and was told to contact the vendor. The vendor who sold me the phone and service plan referred me to another 800 number who said I had the wrong department and transferred me to the "right" department, who told me that I really needed to call this other number. Five people later I think maybe I'm on my way to getting my rebate check. But should it really be this difficult?

So on behalf on everyone who has been put on hold for an interminable length of time with insipid music playing in the background, for those of us who have to ask the customer service rep to repeat themselves an infinite number of times because their heavily accented English is completely incomprehensible, for all who have waited hours for a service technician to show up because an "appointment" is a four hour window of time smack in the middle of your day--Mona "The Hammer" Shaw, we salute you!