He obviously thought he was a hard ass.
So9
DON'T TROUBLE TROUBLE TIL TROUBLE TROUBLES YOU
Rosie has had a new hobby this past few weeks. She decided that she would switch our telephone service from company A, who we've been with for years out of sheer inertia, to company B, who offer all sorts of enticements to new subscribers. When she told me she wanted to do this, I ran from the room screaming: "I DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT! YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN!!" She went ahead anyway, and found out what I knew by instinct: that telephone providers, like internal organs, are best left alone so long as they behave themselves.
We have two lines coming into the house. One is a regular phone, one runs a phone/fax combination machine, with different numbers for fax and phone, and different ringing tones. This configuration proved to be far beyond the understanding of any company B employee. To them, it was nuclear physics. Rosie spent, I would estimate, several dozen hours on the phone trying to explain it to them, and also to sort out their weird postmodern billing system. She was never able to make them understand our requirements, though, nor could she ever figure out their statements. (I myself refused to look: "Sorry, honey, life's too short to go messing with phone companies.") In frustration at last she switched back to company A... Who by this time had expunged all memory of us from their databases, and had to have everything explained to them all over again... A word to the wise: If your telephones work, for God's sake leave them alone!
So9