Something to think about when you are on hold

Hello?

Remember the old days when you had a telephone installed and the man from Ma Bell did all the magic stuff he did and ta-ta!? You got yourself a real telephone. A big momma with a rotary dial and built sturdy enough to beat an intruder half to death.

Well, a lot of much younger folks might not. I do remember rotary dial phones. The first phone that I can remember in the second house in which I grew up was a rotary dial. A note: The first house I lived in — from birth until I was around 10 — didn’t have a phone that I can remember. I seem to remember hearing my parents had a phone at some point in time in “the old house” but I don’t remember it. Nevertheless.

My first phone, after I got out of the Navy and worked as a firefighter, was a touch tone. That had the same keypad layout you see to day. Those type of phones also were a transition to life without a central switching office with actual humans who would dial the number for you. Can you imagine that?

Of course, I am not old enough to remember depending entirely on an operator for a call. But you would have to call an operator to make a long distance or collect call, as well as for local information. The mother of a friend from high school worked as an operator in the little telephone building in my hometown. I could always tell her voice when I dialed “O.”

This was before the days of recorded voices telling you which numbers to punch, driving a sane person half mad and and a mad person insane. That was what happened today. It’s kind of involved, but these days when you deal with a cell company, it’s always that way. I don’t have a land line these days, BTW. (Oh come on, you know that means “By the Way.” Get with it!)

I recently switched my phone service from T-Mobile to Verizon because Verizon provides my wireless Internet.—> I went to the Verizon store and got a new phone, but not the one I wanted. —> The phone I bought had a faulty camera. (Wow, when I was a kid I could have never imagined a camera on my phone. I couldn’t have imagined a phone one takes everywhere.) —> I got into an argument with the store guy because I didn’t feel like I should have paid a $35 restocking fee to make a basic dollar-for-dollar trade. —> I raised a little hell with Verizon, then I raised a lot more hell. —> The company waived the restocking fee and sent me a “new” phone. It wasn’t new, however. It was used and a Blackberry. I didn’t want a Blackberry. The phone I wanted already had mobile Internet access. Wow. What’s an Internets? —> Today I finally got my phone. I programmed it but had to call Verizon six times to get everything I needed done.

And there you are. I live in a time I never imagined as a kid except,  perhaps, when playing like I was Dick Tracy from the “Funnies” and the weird-looking detective who wore an interactive TV on his wrist watch.

So today, we have tiny little telephones that can communicate over a wide world and find out damn near anything — although you have to be careful as to the veracity — and write little messages damn near anytime. You can take pictures and just send them right over the phone. I can even make a video. On my phone!

But to do all of this, we have to go through our own little brand of Hell. Instruction books one receives when you get a new phone, or computer or TV are basically little pamphlets that don’t instruct. When one calls “customer service,” the path is littered with voice “prompts” at every turn, followed often by waiting to speak with someone which can sometime last hours. Finally, you might talk with someone who works who knows where and who knows what they are talking about, or not.

This all leads me to ask: What price for magical methods of communicating on devices which are built as much as for convenience as they are for the actual act of communicating with someone?

Sometimes, I think the answer to such a question is “a lot.”

You could get Miz Jeanette, the operator, by simply dialing “O.” You could speak with a person you know. If you were a few cents short to make a call at the pay phone outside the phone company, it wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t have to yell and raise nine kinds of hell to get results in your favor. That was unthinkable. You could get results, most of the time, by being polite.

It’s too trite to paraphrase Bob Dylan that the “times, they are a’ changing.” But I did. Damn. I got to go and check my e-mail.

Your what?