Yes. They ARE all out to get you

This is a mommy Sheltand pony and her 1-week-old baby. They came walking by when we had breakfast Sunday with Lindsay and Ryan at the Farmer and Cook in Meiners Oaks. It was just a happy moment.

It started right after the New Year when our health insurance was inexplicably canceled out of nowhere. We'd been paying the premiums on time, but somehow they thought we owned them even more than the obscene sum we send them each month for CalCOBRA health insurance coverage. In California, workers are guaranteed health coverage even after losing their jobs if they work for a company with 25 or fewer people. COBRA covers people working for companies with more than 25 people.

They figured it out, reinstated us and jacked our bill and then jacked it some more. It costs as much for health insurance as it would to pay rent for a studio apartment. Of course once we got that all straightened out, it got all screwed up again.

If that weren't annoying enough, our health insurance Kaiser Permanente seems to be going through a rough spell, especially when it comes to customer service. They keep billing me for random amounts for procedures that have long been paid for. I did get them to reverse a $500 charge, but they keep coming back like inexorable flesh-eating zombies.

I started thinking maybe it was just us. That maybe we were extremely unlucky. It took all kinds of irate phone conversations to be upgraded to an iPhone because AT&T had screwed up our eligibility. I mean here I am locked and loaded, ready to spend a good sum of money and they won't even let me.

But as we were slogging though yet another day of calling rude customer service agent after rude customer service agent -- right now the insurance billing company needs to send us back our payment, and we can't seem to get them to do so -- I realized our housemate was on the phone having his own irate conversations. In the past couple of weeks he's had a couple of bureaucratic snafus that make our little problems seem trivial.

I started thinking that if what we are experiencing is actually becoming more and more normal, as companies cut back and customer service people, who are paid next to nothing and aren't usually the brightest bulbs in the socket, are overworked and as workloads become overwhelming and people make more mistakes, then we're all going to be spending more and more useless hours undoing the damage the idiots are causing.

Isn't this yet another one of those intangible drags that are threatening to suck us into a vortex of failure? As Cher said in that movies that she inexplicably won an Oscar for, "Snap out of it!" People have to start spending money and remembering basic economic principles of good customer service and good quality products. It's hard for all of us. Everything's been cut back and that sucks, but seriously, people still need to try a little harder.

My very favorite thing about the U.S. is that we're a scrappy country. Compared with the stodgy Europeans and the tradition-bound Asians and Middle Easterners, we tend to roll with the punches with greater agility because we don't tend to be governed by ancient mores. I'm just hoping that we can focus on rebuilding and going forward.

Our new president is right, we can make this a time of tremendous opportunity. But it will take a little hard work and a lot better attitude. Times are tough for everyone and seeing as we're all in it together, let's try to be a little nicer. This especially goes for those "customer service" people, but I'm also sending it out to that guy in the big white pickup truck who rode four inches from my rear bumper and is now swerving around me.

And I want to thank the people who are being nicer, like the bakery lady at Von's who saw me leaving the sorry-looking display of cookies. "Wait. I have some freshly baked ones," she said. I'll take a warm cookie any day.