So I get there, and I see the gates, and I see the guards, and I instinctively walk up to the guard post. There were two guards there. The one I spoke to first was a young girl, and I imagined she was a work-study person, even though I have no proof of that. I ask if I can go to the office. She asks if I have an appointment. Frankly, I start blubbering about needing to go up there real quick, I thought I lied and said I had an appointment ... I don't know. I was short on time, and I had a bit of a temper, and I was extremely frustrated at myself that I may be too late in getting this claim in on time, and I needed one little piece of information in order to send this claim which might be too late in sending anyway, but the fucking office wouldn't return my call, so that's why I'm there.
Maybe not the best situation in which to confront a Paul Blart type, but he was the other guard. When I was getting a tad more belligerent with the first guard, this other one, a White dude (of course) who may be an actual cop but may be a toy one, stepped in. "If you don't have an appointment, you're not going in."
I didn't really have any other option at this point. But fuckin' A, I. Need. This. Information. So even though in the back of my mind I couldn't big-time this asshole, I blurted it out anyway: "I just need to go up there for a few minutes."
And this guy, who was talking to what appeared to be a nurse, stared at me: "You're not going in."
And now I had no option. Without talking back, because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of verbally backing down, I took the advice of the first guard, who said I should call the office and maybe, just maybe, that person can come down and get me. I wasn't going to win a staring contest with Rent-A-Cop, but I did, like, passive-aggressively throw my bookbag onto the other side of the guard's counter to, like, mark my territory short of pissing all over it. It really only affected the young, first guard, and she didn't raise too much of a stink. The other guard, well, he went back to chit-chatting with the nurse. So human, he. Actually, I want to think he's trying to sleep with her. Fuck that guy. He shortly thereafter stated he was going to make his rounds, like a wannabe cop.
I didn't know what to do, except to call every number I had for the office above in a Hail Mary attempt to reach someone who could patch me over to this office. The first number went to voicemail. So did the second. The third? By the power of Buddha above, I got an answer: "Hello?" By a miracle, for the first time in this whole fucking ordeal, I got a real person, and it's the same person I dealt with when I went up to the office to straighten out this claim the first time.
She said she had tried to leave me a voicemail wherein she would just give me the Federal Tax ID, but my phone took her straight to voicemail, at which point it told her she couldn't leave a message. I Googled around if such a phenomenon was true, and indeed, it is; with the update to iOS v.13.0 (I think), I believe I opted into using the feature whereby all numbers I am not familiar with are automatically blocked. I don't know the details of what happens when an unfamiliar number calls me, but I think I knew what I was getting into when I opted in and I didn't care if anyone unfamiliar tried to get ahold of me.
So I got the Federal Tax ID and my temper just abated from me. I got what I wanted, even though I wasted a trip down to the U. in order to do it. Also, as I was packing up (I was doing this whole call on speakerphone because, in my frazzled state, I wanted everyone to fucking hear me, for some reason that does not make sense now that I'm not crazy and upset), the first guard just said, "I'm glad you got that straightened out." Ten percent of me thinks she was being sarcastic, but the majority of me wanted to believe she was genuine, so to split the difference in a way, I said, while packing up the paper and pen with which I used to write down said ID and not looking at her at all, "Me too."
In retrospect, I think I may have treated her unkindly. Really, I should have expected what happened yesterday morning. And the security guard, especially the Toy Cup, was doing his job. But seriously, though, I don't think he cared about helping me, and since I always have to look out for Number One -- and if the roles were reversed, you know damn well I would be talking about rules and protecting the staff upstairs -- fuck him and his authoritah.
One problem, I think: While talking loudly over the phone to this accountant, I introduced myself. Now, I think this young guard is nice, but then again, she is a guard. She knows my name. She could easily identify with Toy Cop and tell him my name. In fact, I think I should assume that Toy Cop now knows my name. So if I am killed, and the news says someone in the middle of the night broke into my house and stabbed me a hundred times -- well, find the White Toy Cop who was down at the basement guarding the U. dental clinic building during the 8 o'clock hour. That psycho fucker wants to kill me, I just know it.
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