Last week my washer started leaking. I scheduled an appointment with Sears to come and see why. Of course they can only give a 4 hour window of when they will arrive, but you can call on the day of the appointment to get it narrowed down. So, my window was from 8am to noon. I called at 7 that morning and was told the repairman would be there between 11:30 and noon. They also told me he would call when he was on the way.
Okay, I would have preferred to be on the earlier end of that 4 hour window, but at least I knew what to expect and could plan my morning accordingly. When 11:30 rolled around and I hadn't receive a call, nor had the repairman shown up, I called again to get an update.
I was told that an appointment took longer than expected and he would now arrive between 12:30 and 1:45. Well...I was pretty upset about this change, to put it mildly. After allowing myself to spin for a while on the same thoughts that were making me upset, I thought perhaps I should take my own advice, and apply some of the tools I teach to clients.
Using the basic concept of cognitive therapy, which is that our thoughts about an event create our emotions related to that event, I took a look at what I was telling myself. What it boiled down to was that I felt unimportant, that my needs (and time) didn’t matter and that I had no choice but to put up with being treated badly by Sears.
I then came up with alternative ways to look at this situation. Sure, it would have been nice to get a call that the repairman was running late, but separate from that I really did understand that they cannot predict how long any given service call will take; i.e. it didn’t mean that they thought my time was unimportant. They are running a business, and trying to provide this service in the most cost effective way possible.
Secondly, I did have other choices. I don’t have to use Sears’ repair service (and believe me, initially my self-talk was that I never would again). I could have chosen at that point to cancel my appointment and schedule with another plumber or handyman instead. For convenience sake, I chose not to. But it was a choice, my choice.
After going through this process, I did feel better. I still didn’t like that I had to wait around for a couple more hours, but I didn’t feel nearly as upset about it. It also helped that when the repairman arrived, he was friendly and helpful. I found out that he had to drive from Carnation (I live in Seattle) and he could have been just as grumpy as I had been feeling, but he wasn’t.
Additionally, I discovered that my tweets on Twitter had been picked up by Sears (isn’t technology something?), and they called me to see how they could make things right. Of course they couldn’t give me back the extra time it cost out of my day, but I did get someone to listen to me and my pain, which I think was all I really wanted anyway.
