When we moved up here to The Okanagan from the United States, we knew we would be renting a hoose. First off, we didn't know anything aboot the town & didn't want to establish a permanent home in an area we might not like. Secondly, we had no Canadian credit or bank account, making the purchase of a hoose an impossibility. So we rented. Which gave us the opportunity to check oot a neighbourhood before settling down there (I will say, Quail Ridge, our neighbourhood is very pretty and quiet, with almost no children to speak of (being on a golf course lends itself to an older population) - but is also on the very very edge of town, with only one way into town, leaving no alternative routes should traffic or weather make Rt 97 an problem).
Our hoose is owned by a wealthy family that lives in Taiwan. They had the hoose built especially for them right before the market burst, planning on moving in when they moved their business to town. When those plans fell through, they decided to stay in Taiwan and rent the hoose oot (renting being a more likely prospect for income on the property than trying to sell. There are hooses in Quail Ridge that have been for sale for over 3 years - but then, 90% of Kelowna is a luxury community, not easily lending itself to a quick recovery in the housing market). With that comes a property manager who works as a proxy for the family here in Canada. Steve is our PM, and we really lucked out with him - he's a really great guy and excellent PM.
The Ugly
We started getting mail for the owners of the hoose. During the first couple of months, we saw Steve more frequently than we do now, as he was making sure we were settling in okay, so we could hand over the mail to him. But now, we only see Steve when he has to make a quarterly inspection of the hoose (per Canadian law, all rental properties must be inspected by the landlord/property manager/owner every 3 months to ensure the renters are not engaging in any illegal activity or trashing the place - this law really came into it's own when rental properties became pop-up pot-growing operations under Canada's liberal medical marijuana laws). The mail for Jet Li (not the owner's real name - but how cool would that be!?) has been piling up, with seemingly important letters arriving from the city and insurance companies. At first, I'd drive down to Steve's office a few blocks from the lakefront. But I rarely go all the way downtown, and to do so just to drop off some mail is rather inconvenient and a waste of very expensive gas (gas here in Kelowna is the highest in all the western provinces - topping $1.39 a litre. To give you an idea, Calgary and Vancouver are at $1.14 a litre, and gas (sorry, petrol) is almost universally more expensive in big cities than in the sticks). So I thought I'd go to the Canada Post office and put in a change of address form to have Jet Li's mail sent to Steve's office.
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| My nephew, Joe |
"That'll be $47.95 for 6 months."
"I'm sorry. I think you misunderstood me. I just wanted to put in a change of address for the previous occupant to make sure their mail gets to the right person - I have that new address right here."
"And that'll be $47.95."
"You're joking." I picked my eyeballs up off the counter and put them back into my head.
And then she actually said this: "It takes an awful lot of work for us to go through the trouble of making changes to a delivery route. We need to get paid to do these extra things."
I picked my jaw up off the counter and forcibly closed my mouth. "Sorry, but in the States, where I'm from, it's a normal part of the job, and free"
"And the way your postal system is going, I don't imagine it's gonna be free much longer. It ain't free here."
And then it dawned on me: we can never move. We can never move because I refuse to give Canada Post the satisfaction of handing over $47.95 for something that is and should be part of their everyday job. It's like going into a Burger King and being charged extra for asking that an item be left off your sandwich. Sure, it makes sense to charge for something additional (like my being charged more to have something shipped outside the country to the US - that costs them more, so it should cost me more). But to be charged extra to eliminate an item (as I am asking that delivery to my address be eliminated for the prior occupant) makes no sense.
I took the letters for Jet Li home with me.
And now is the dilemma: do I simply put them in a larger envelope and mail them to Steve's office (which hands over stamp money to Canada Post), or do I waste the gas to drive all the way down there just to slip a couple of envelopes (that may or may not be important) under his door? Do I wait and hand them over the next time he comes by, or do I tell him he needs to come pick them up as it's really his responsibility as the PM to handle the owner's affairs here in Canada? It seems petty to say to Steve "I refuse to pay $47.95 for the convenience of neither of us having to drive to see each other to hand over mail for a third party, so you need to go do that, and come get these letters while you are at it." This is now more aboot the inanity of Canada Post than anything. Maybe I just write Steve and tell him how stupid it is that they wanted to charge me so much for the service, and how did he want to handle Jet Li's mail going forward?
Petty? Maybe. But frustrating, too. Nothing but nothing seems to be convenient here in Canada. And the more time I spend in with the public sector and government employees, the less and less I see of the famous (and apparently highly over-rated) Canadian politeness. There was nothing but scorn on the part of that Canada Post ogre. Oh, yes, she was an ogre. Her attitude was one of both lackadaisical indifference and unfounded superiority (esp when she found oot I was a haughty, rude, warmongering American), and it really got my goat. On top of that were the looks of frustration and derision from those in line behind me as I turned and passed them on my way oot the door. And then it hit me - a wave of patriotism. American patriotism. I knew, right then and there that I was still, and will always be, an American - lucky to be born in a country that Canada will always aspire to be (all while hypocritically condemning).
When I return to the US next week for holiday, I'm going to go into the Post Office and put in a change of address for Canada and have their mail re-directed to Zimbabwe.
The Bad
Lisa and I stopped in the mall this last Saturday as she wanted to check oot the brand new Sephora store that had opened a few days before. On the way into the mall, we passed through The Bay - an anchor department store. The Bay is actually the current day manifestation of the famed Hudson's Bay Company. It's kind of a Sioux Falls, South Dakota version of a Macy's. But as we walked through, Lisa saw these really nice cable-knit cardigan sweaters for me. Try them on, fit great, on sale, buy 2 (one of each colour), and head to the register. There is a small middle aged woman behind the counter. She has an expression and demeanour three shades blander than beige. And she's a low-talker. Not just a low talker, but a mumbley, eye-averting low-talker. She's asking me questions with less intonation than Kristin Stewart professing her love to a sparkling teenaged vampire, but I can't hear her. I notice her name tag and under her name it says "customer service". Yeah, right. In a store where a pair of socks costs as much as a Volvo, I would expect the service (or even the volume of her voice) to be a little higher. I'm not asking for champagne and truffles served on silver trays while I get a manicure in a crushed velvet chair at the register while I wait for my transaction to go through on my American Express Black Card. I'm simply asking for a smile, eye contact, and an audible cashier. Instead, I got a withered whisp of a woman who made me feel as if I was inconveniencing her by making her actually speak.
Famed Canadian politeness my ass.
The Good
Sunday is football day. Sunday is the day that Lisa and I, after a quick coffee and breakfast, plop down on the sofa in front of the fireplace and big screen tv, with our laptops opened to our fantasy football team stats, and worship the almighty American pigskin (more specifically, the Green Bay Packers). When we lived in Oregon, we were unable to get the NFL Network so that we could see every game. Being on the west coast, we would invariably get Seahawks games or 49ers games. Almost never a Green Bay game. And if we wanted to go to a bar that was showing a Green Bay game on satellite, the Packer-friendly bars were all the way across town and across the river (over an hour drive). With the time-shift channels here on satellite, allowing us to see channels across the country, we thought for sure we'd be able to see just aboot every game, given how many channels there are to pick from. But the first Sunday of football season was a huge disappointment. We had the same game on 14 different channels.
So we called up the satellite company and ordered NFL Sunday Ticket and subscribed to the NFL Network for $200 (for the whole season). Every game, all in glorious HD. Our Sundays were now more perfect than they had ever been.
Until this last weekend. The Packer-Broncos game was the mid-day game, on after the morning games. After watching the Detroit Lions defeat the hated Dallas Cowboys, we switched over to the appropriate channel, ready for Aaron Rodgers to lead our boys to another victory. Remote in hand, I switched the channel.I see girlie-haired Tom Brady. It was the Patriots - Raiders game. I checked the guide, and sure enough, it said this was the channel for the Packers game. I flipped through each of the NFL network channels and no Packers game at all. I checked the regular network channels showing the games, and nothing but the pathetic Patriots. I don't know which of us was more furious. Lisa is a die-hard football fan, in three different fantasy football leagues (and is commissioner of one of them) and has her own personalized Packers jersey. She grabbed the phone and called up Bell Media (our satellite provider).
After spending what seemed like 4 hours going through a phone tree, she gave up and got online to virtual chat with an operator (connecting almost immediately). After explaining the situation, the rep, Marvin, asked us to check the non-HD channels to see if it was on there. Sure enough, it was. BUT, I was paying for HD versions of every game. And the next thing we knew, Marvin was giving us the subscription Sportsnet channels (which were showing the Packers game, in HD), for free for the remainder of the season. We didn't ask for them, and actually, having saw them in the channel guide, we thought they were the French-language subscription sports channels (as just aboot every blocked oot channel in our system is for French-language stations). But here was Marvin, without blinking an eye, figured out a solution and offered us a free upgrade in order to solve our problem. Within minutes, we were screaming joyously at the TV, enjoying the latest Green Bay Packer victory.
Marvin is what customer service is all aboot. Marvin is what the rumours of Canadian politeness are all aboot. But how sad is it that of three customer service encounters, the one that was not face to face was the only positive experience? That being said, it's very possible that Marvin wasn't even in Canada, maybe not Canadian at all. You'd expect the rudeness to come from the one person hiding behind the protective barrier of the internets. But instead, as I am coming to discover more and more, Canadian customer service is exempt from the cultural provenance of politeness. I think, given the lack of choices available to Canadians, stores here don't need to retain customers with renown service - they know there really is no where else to go.
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| Our hoose in Oregon decorated for Halloween |
I am hoping that the upcoming holiday season will bring happier and more joyous tidings. We are looking forward to decorating the hoose for both Halloween and Christmas (I'm going to Clark Griswold the hell oot of this place!). I'm excited to see the surrounding mountains covered in snow. I'm interested in seeing how Canada celebrates these holidays and what kind of winter adventures await us here in Kelowna. So don't fear a permanent trend toward the negative, for happier times lie ahead, eh!
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| Christmas in Oregon - THIS year, I'm going to quadruple the number of lights and show my fellow Canucks how Americans do Chrsitmas! |
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Re:the Ugly. I was holding my breath. I was wondering if the owners of your home are actually supposed to be residing in Canada to maintain their residency status. You need to live in the country for ?2.5 years out of 5?. Unsure, but there is a set time frame. If you are not in country for that amount, theoretically you could be kicked oot. Of course they might have come in under the entrepreneur deal, since they are wealthy.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I would dump the entire problem on Steve, your PM. He can either move their address or pick up mail more frequently.(Or not, but it would be his thing.) And I would just get a big box in the garage for the mail. And label it "Steve's".
I appreciate the balanced honest approach. I do not want fairy tales, and do not expect them. Keep doing what you're doing!