Topic: Hammer Time

[Reno]

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes truly American virtues arise in outlaws who -- by dint of heroic but questionable endeavors -- display the mettle of the national character.

Hammer time! That's what it was when Mona Shaw returned to her local Comcast office a few days after she spent two hours waiting outside for a manager and then was told he had left for the day. Shaw took her frustrations out on a keyboard, monitor and phone. Shaw was arrested and charged, but "I scared the tar out of some people, at least." - RICHARD A. LIPSKI / The Washington Post
   
Today we have none other than 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw, who took the aforementioned implement to her local Comcast office to settle a score, and boy, did she!
This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much ballyhooed "Triple Play" service, which combines phone, cable and Internet services, in Shaw's brick home in suburban Bristow, Va. But Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but left with the job half-done. On Friday morning, they cut off all service.
So on that Friday, Mona Shaw and her husband, Don, went to the call center office in Manassas, Va., to complain.
Let's pick it up, mid-action, according to Shaw:
Mona demands to speak to a manager. A customer service representative says someone will be right with them. Directs them to a bench, outside. (Remember, it's mid-August.) Mona and Don sit.
Tick, tick, tick, goes the clock. Sit, sit, sit, go Mona and Don.
For. Two. Hours.
And then -- this is the best part -- the customer rep leans out the door and says the manager has left for the day. Thanks for coming!
The insulting idea was that, as Shaw puts it, "they thought just because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone."
So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said, "C'mon, honey, we're going to Comcast."
Did you try to stop her, Mr. Shaw?
"Oh no, no," he says.
Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up, and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!
"They cuffed me right then," she says.
Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
Of note: This is a misdemeanor, a crime, a completely inappropriate way of handling a business dispute.
Noted.
Who among us has not longed for a hammer in this age of incompetent "customer service representatives," of installation people who tell you they'll grace you with their presence between 12 and 3, only never to show? And when someone finally does arrive, he'll tell you he brought the wrong part?
And there is nothing you can do.
Until there! On the horizon! It's Hammer Woman, avenger of oppressed cable subscribers everywhere!
"I scared the tar out of some people, at least," she says. "It had never occurred to me to take a hammer to a phone company before, but I was just so upset. . . . After I hit the keyboard, I turned to this blonde who had been there the previous Friday, the one who told me to wait for the manager, and I said, 'Now do I have your attention?' "
Shaw received a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a $345 fine for restitution and a yearlong restraining order barring her from the Comcast office.
"Truly a unique and inappropriate situation," says Beth Bacha, a vice president for Comcast. She says company policy forbids disclosure of clients' records but did say their files note that the service record wasn't exactly what Shaw has indicated. Besides, "nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior."
Mona Shaw does finally have phone service.
With Verizon.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071020/NATIONWORLD/710200455/-1/LOCAL17

[Clive]

Good for her!   

[Delgado]

Love it!

This era of couldnt care less is driving me mad as well.

     

[Simon]

Could do with more like her!