| Monday, November 20, 2006 |
| A rant, rave and complain post |
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so frustrated.
No, not sexually, any dirty-minded people.
I am frustrated with trip-planning.
It is getting a bit ridiculous. We are leaving in four months. We have no tour booked, no airfares, no accommodation, no definate tour-route plans, no dates.
I like to plan. I am a planner. This is possibly why I am a relatively organised (re: pedantic) person. Why I am doing my PhD, where you must plan 3 years ahead.
We have been waiting on the release of the new tour brochure, which has the dates. Last week after hassling both Topdeck (the tour company) directly and then the travel agent, I got definate dates, prices and then, wah-lah! a brochure. Three brochures, in fact, so we could pass them around and look. According to the travel agent, these tours fill up very quickly, given that it's not like contiki where one leaves pretty much every day. Only four leave a month, and we are going on the most popular tour. So, last Tuesday I made an appointment to meet with the travel agent and book all five of us in on this tour next Tuesday (as it was then. It is now tomorrow). We get an extra $100 discount each, as there's so many of us going.
Last Tuesday night, all of us had to work. We discussed the trip, worked out times to have a trip-planning meeting. I showed Katie and Rose the brochures whilst we were on break. Offered to let them take them home to look at, which they did not do. The tour is however on the Topdeck Tour website, where it has been all year. I told everyone that we had to be organised by next Tuesday, when I have this meeting. Everyone knew that that was why it was imperitive that we have a meeting over the weekend. I have to listen to Katie telling me how much she wants to get everything booked and how stupid she's felt telling people from uni that she's going overseas next year when they ask what she's doing, and when they say "well have you booked yet" she says, "Um, no" and they look all knowing like she's not really going and she feels stupid and pathetic.
Many meeting dates were put forward and then declined. Finally we settled on Sunday at 1pm. Then Katie got a ticket to go to this free concert (free, but you still needed to get a ticket to enter), so the meeting was changed to 5pm Sunday. I tell everyone that to book us on the trip I need a photocopy of their passport or license as id, plus $200 deposit so please bring it with them. 5pm Sunday I arrive at Rose's and discover that it is only the two of us plus Felicity at the meeting. Katie and Frieda can't make it. Frieda has a cold and is too sick to make it(despite the fact she managed to make it out for dinner with us and then out to a pub the night before) and Katie's concert doesn't finish until 8 pm.
Annoyed, but the three of us carry on and just chat away about possible plans and dates and just usual excited stuff like Rose asking: "Can you catch a train to Loch Ness?" and "How did you get across that massive river in Edinburgh?" and Felicity commenting: "Yeah, I've heard of Stonehenge". Felicity decides that as we can't set anything definate without the other two then we need to have a meeting Monday night with them there. Plus I still need photocopies of their licenses and their deposits.
Katie contacts Felicity and says she can't make the meeting as she's going to Launceston with her boyfriend for his birthday (city two hours away) on Monday. I message her and say "I need a copy of your licence plus your deposit before 11am Tuesday, you'll have to find a way to get it to me."
I have no reply.
Today, after driving for 6 hours and wandering around the bush (just because I happened to be doing this for my research, this is in no way connected to our trip), I get a message from Felicity. It says "Hey just spoke to Katie and don't think she's happy giving a deposit before she's had a chance to look over everything. She gets back from India on Dec 14".
Yes, Katie is going to India this weekend. All expenses-paid trip with her parents and brother. She actually doesn't want to go. Honestly, rich people piss me off. She didn't want to go on the cruise around the Phillipines either. It's not like she dosn't get on with her brother, either. He's only a couple of years younger than her and they're quite good friends.
So, despite the fact that we've known we were going to do this particular tour for oh, about five months, despite the fact that Katie has been desperate to book airfares/tour so she doesn't feel stupid in front of her law-degree friends, to the point of saying "well if we don't make dates soon I'm going to book without you," she feels like she can't pay the $200 deposit and book with us tomorrow because she hasn't looked everything over properly.
I am furious.
I spoke to Felicity on the phone after receiving her message and Katie had rung her and said "I'd prefer it that Cecilia is mad with me in the short-term rather than I pay out money and get overseas and not like it and be mad with Cecilia in the long-term". She also said that she didn't want to pay out so much money when she doesn't know what she's getting.
We have planned to do this tour for months. She has known all week that I have the new brochures, she even glanced at them herself, and that we were doing the booking this Tuesday. I am also pissed off that she couldn't call me or message me and let me know herself.
Aren't you being just a teensy bit unreasonable Cecilia? I hear you ask. Well, honestly, I don't think I am. If we wait until after Katie gets back from India, has a chance to 'look over' everything, and then book in to the travel agent and make our tour booking, there is a very real chance that we would have missed out on the date we want to leave on, if not all three of the dates it leaves in the month of May.
I have done everything for the girl. I have gotten brochures, quotes for car hire, hassled Topdeck about when are they finally releasing the brochure so we can book, hassled the travel agent, gotten the best deal possible with her for the tour, and then, with one week's notice, let everyone know that we need to pay the deposit and give me id photocopies for Tuesday. And now, THE F*****G DAY BEFORE Katie feels that she hasn't 'looked everything' over. She could have gotten a brochure off me to 'look over' on the two-hour drive to Launnie with her boyfriend.
I have no idea what to do now. Cancel my appointment tomorrow, I guess. What I really want to do is book the other four of us in and let Katie take her chances for when she gets back from India. The others are more charitable than I am, however, and won't do that. But then, they haven't been the one doing all the organising. |
posted by Cecilia @ 4:47 pm  |
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| 3 Rantings: |
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Where are you going?
Oh, and I wouldn't care about someone being pissed at me now when if you don't book, you could be screwed and not get to go at all.
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Hi Doug! We are going to the UK, starting in London and driving around Britain a bit up to Glasgow, then going to Edinburgh, then hopefully flying to Dublin and driving around Ireland, before returning to london to leave on a 28 day tour of Europe (just the usual ordinary places, like France, Austria, Switzerland, Barcelona plus Croatia and Prague).
At the suggestion of the others, not me (I said, 'I don't know what to do, so you'll have to tell me!') I booked the four of us in today. Rose rang Katie and told her that she was risking not being on the same tour as us, plus losing a group-booking discount of $100. Sure enough, today Katie messaged me to ask if I could book her on after all. She just has to go into the travel agent tomorrow and pay her deposit and show her id.
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Ok, I can't keep track of your work girls' code names so I don't remember who Katie is, but tell her to get fucked! She's being a brat and you're letting yourself be pushed around (like we were talking about the other day)
YELL AT HER! Tell her that you've been organising this for everyone (presumably with no help, if I know you) and that you're SICK of her rich girl bullshit and she's just holding everyone else up because she's a pain in the arse. Don't let yourself be browbeaten by their crap!
And why would the silly bitch be angry with YOU if she didn't like the tour? Did you design the country? No. Stupid cow
Stand up for yourself, Ceci
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Where are you going?
Oh, and I wouldn't care about someone being pissed at me now when if you don't book, you could be screwed and not get to go at all.