"The system does not allow it"

My annoyance at the way the world is run definitely came to a front the other day. I have often expressed an annoyance for the rigidness of today's society, the inflexibility of rules and regulations that are put in place just to make the little people feel like they have some power. Back in the day (of course before I was born), things were far more relaxed, you had your local shops, they remembered you and your favourite products. Now we are faced with a cold and frosty environment, where the members of staff are so glazed over (trust me, I worked in a shop last summer and I soon became this way) that they wouldn't recognise the same customer if they returned daily. Of course, not true of all shops, there are some exceptions - I am more referring here to the huge superstores like Tesco. The rules may not be broken, under any circumstances. For example, a boy at my bus stop the other day was not allowed on as he was 1 pence short of the fare. The driver seemed to take a little too much glee in enforcing his rules and not allowing the poor boy on. Seriously, what difference would 1 pence have made to a steep £2.90 fare.

As a pure example of this, a couple of days ago I rung up Virgin to cancel my internet I had taken out last year for my student house as I did not want to pay for more than the year contract I had initially signed up for. After speaking to several people (for whom English was not their first language), I was told by a woman that if I wanted to cancel before the year was up, I would incur a fine. Fair enough I thought, so I asked her to cancel it at the end of the contract, the 21st September, instead of rolling it on. However, she told me that this was not possible as it was more than 30 days away, and you cannot cancel more than 30 days in advance as "the system does not allow it". I was most unimpressed, as I had already by this point spent about £10 on their premium line. She told me that I must call back on the 21st August to cancel. Out of interest, I asked her what would happen if I were to cancel on the 22nd  of August instead. She then told me that I would incur a fine as that would be less than 30 days notice. Astounded I narrowly avoided swearing, and told her that this was ridiculous as I was trying now to give her more than 30 days notice and this was not allowed, but she confirmed that the only day I could cancel without paying a fine would be the 21st August. I asked sarcastically if it had to be before or after midday, but she did not appreciate the humour of the situation and told me that either would be fine. As ridiculous as this appears, I have set an alarm in my phone calendar so that I can avoid this fine.

This teamed with the awful service I had initially with Virgin - they set our password for us and after a dialogue that went like this:

Virgin Man: What password would you like?
Me: Townsend54 please
Virgin Man: All in lowercase?
Me: Yes all in lowercase please
Virgin Man: Okay, all in lowercase it is.

However, after struggling to get on the internet for several hours, constantly unplugging, resetting and what not to the internet, we tested the password with a capital 't' and guess what, it worked. I shall be taking my internet needs else where in future.