Priorities, Priorities, Priorities.

I want to preface this post with the clear statement that I appreciate the police and what they do. Theirs is a job that combines the worst of public service, odd working hours, customer service, unrealistic expectations, and unreasoning hatred, all spiced with a liberal sprinkling of danger. Society cannot exist without the police, and I thank them for (usually) fulfilling their often thankless tasks as well as they do.

That said, there are moments when I wonder about their priorities.

This past weekend, during four separate trips that I drove over the course of a single day -- total elapsed time of approximately 10 hours -- I witnessed, and/or had to maneuver my vehicle to avoid, all of the following:

• At least three vehicles showing only running lights -- no headlights! -- well after sundown;
• One vehicle being driven well after sundown with absolutely no lights on at all; 
• Several vehicles with various combinations of only one headlight, only one tail light, and/or no working brake lights;
• One large red SUV come to a complete stop in the middle of a block in the left-hand travel lane of a multi-lane road, sit unmoving for almost a full minute, then make an illegal U-turn;
• Two vehicles run a red light in tandem, pushing through a crowded intersection when only the turn signals were green;
• One small blue import whose driver decided he wanted the left lane - no, the right lane... no, the left... the right! The left! The right! Then make a left turn through traffic from the center lane of a busy road;
• One large blue SUV and one silver compact sedan (at different times and in different locations) attempt to move into my lane while still directly beside my vehicle;
• One large, brown, 1980s vintage 4-door sedan driven by a prototypical little old man move down a clear, straight, well-marked 2-lane road at a maximum speed 10mph below the posted limit;
• A dingy white van of late 1970s vintage come to a complete stop at every intersection in a residential neighborhood, regardless of whether or not a stop sign was present;
• A small red SUV come to a wheel-locking, tire-squealing sudden halt in traffic and then veeerrrrryyy sllloooowwwwwwly make a right turn onto a side street;
• A large single-digit number of vehicles whose drivers insisted on following me so closely (at speed) that I could only see the hood of their car, not the front bumper; and
• A respectably large two-digit number of drivers make lane changes without signaling or apparently bothering to see if there was already another vehicle occupying the spot they were trying to move into, often followed by amusing-if-they-weren't-so-dangerous episodes of hand waving, gesticulating, and (in one case) screaming out an open window shared with the drivers of those other vehicles.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, while I was driving my parents home from a family event no more than 10 minutes from their house, my rear view mirror was suddenly filled with flashing red and blue lights. It took a moment for any of us to realize what was happening but yes indeedy, I was being pulled over.

Had I forgotten to turn on my lights? Had I driven through a red light or a stop sign? Had I blocked the flow of traffic, caused another vehicle to maneuver suddenly to avoid a collision, exceeded the posted speed limit by more than 2.5 mph, not engaged in proper lane discipline, or followed another vehicle at a distance or mere inches?

No.

I was pulled over (and thankfully given only a verbal warning) because one of the two bulbs illuminating my rear license plate had burned out.

<sigh>

(And my parents wonder why I, who used to make up wild excuses for a chance to get behind the wheel, now find driving a Major Annoyance.)

Priorities, people, priorities...!

Can You Hear Me Now?

Communication. Such a basic human need that some researchers think our distant ancestors' attempts to communicate with each other were a driving force in the evolution of modern humans. As we became the creatures that we are today, we progressed from (likely) grunts & gestures to a multitude of spoken languages able to convey and debate differences of such fine granularity that those discussions often assume the appearance of shaving a tennis ball.

But what if we want to discuss something with a friend who is sitting on the other side of that mountain over there... or perhaps ask someone two cities to the left on the other side of the valley to kindly stop lobbing shells laden with high explosives at our homes?

Enter long-distance communications. Originally, the technologies varied according to (somewhat ironically) local needs and conditions, e.g., drums in dense jungle where the horizon is invisible vs. smoke signals in wide open spaces where the horizon is defined by the Earth's curvature. Then, after centuries of advancement, development, and the occasional loud "BANG!" more universal technologies emerged that could be used any- and everywhere.

Enter... the telephone.

I mean no disrespect to postal mail, telegraphs, radio, television, the Internet, or even its half-sibling the fax; I will simply point out the fact that the majority of people in the industrialized nations (and a lot of people in other nations) spend every day literally joined to their phone at the hip. In a standard American household, the home phone is part of our identification; it is our bridge to goods & services outside our door; and it is our link to police, fire, and other emergency services in an emergency. In short, it's pretty damned important.

So (to finally get to today's story)... I know someone who recently had trouble with their home phone. Pick up the handset and you get an earful of loud hum, odd electronic sounds, loud screeching, or various combinations thereof. Makes it hard to use the thing, ifyunowutimean?

The sequence of events unwound thusly:

A call is placed (using a cell phone) to the local purveyor of telephony(1) services explaining the problem and requesting help.  The nice lady on the other end of the line is happy to help -- as long as the household has no problems waiting three days for a service technician to start working on the problem. Once the incredulity and its associated minor unpleasantness are gotten over, an appointment is made: the technician will arrive in three days, sometime between 9:00am and 1:55pm. (Not the standard "between nine and two" -- the end time for the technician's arrival time was very specifically 1:55.)

The scheduled day arrives and the homeowners make a point of going nowhere, staying in the house (even taking turns in the bathroom or laundry room so there would always be someone to answer the doorbell)... and nothing. Nada. Rien. Bupkis.  Knowing something is very Not Right, they wait until approximately 2:30pm and call the phone company from a cell phone.

This time the incredulity is on the other end of the wire; after all, the records show the homeowners are wrong, the appointment was for four days later, why did they expect someone today? A few choice words are exchanged, and the homeowners make plans to spend another day under virtual house arrest between the hours of 9:00am and 1:55pm. The phone company does make one concession: since the homeowners were so adamant about which day was the correct day (and possibly, based on some things said by the phone company representative during the conversation, because the company representative realized the homeowners were right and she was wrong), they would be put "at the top of the list" as the day's first stop for the roving technician.

The next morning, at approximately 9:30 in the morning, the homeowners receive a call from a phone company technician. They describe the problem (after all, why should the phone company bother to actually tell their technicians about the problems they are expected to solve?) and the technician assures them he will be there soon... just as soon as he has finished working on the three problem calls ahead of theirs on his list(2).

Eventually the homeowners' clocks show the time is 1:55pm... 2:00pm... 2:30pm... Another cell phone call is placed to the telephone company, and the almost-nice lady on the other end of the wire is surprised the homeowners are having a problem because her system shows a technician had been at the house at approximately 9:30 that morning. No, it does not show that a technician called and spoke with the homeowners on a cell phone at 9:30, it shows the technician physically visited the property... No, no, no, he was there, that's what the system says... and as an added bonus, he diagnosed the problem and a specialist has to be sent out, someone called a "splicer," to fix the problem. He'll be there (all together now) between 9:00am and 1:55pm the next day.

A few more choice words are exchanged, and new promises are made concerning service... Eventually, a nice man in a telephone company van arrives and tells the homeowners he has come to fix their problem. When asked if he is a "splicer," he stops dead in his tracks. No, he is not a splicer, he is a regular technician, no one told him anything about a specialist being needed, and there is no information in the system (he checked while the homeowners watched & listened) about any kind of specialist being needed for this particular task.

The story goes on from there, but the events were much less annoying. Thanks to the technician being a well-trained, experienced professional concerned about customer service, he went a bit beyond the normal call of duty and was able to locate, diagnose, and apply a fix to the problem that has everything functioning The Right Way.

. . .

Gosh, I can't wait to hear what happens when someone calls to report a broken sewer pipe in the street... Oh, wait, I've already got notes on that situation....

. . .

(1) This word is pronounced something like, "te LEH funny" and not "tele PHONY," no matter how tempting it might be to pronounce it in a manner that more correctly refers to the service information purveyed by the phone company to homeowners.

(2) One can only feel sorry for the technician; he must have been expected to solve at least 20 or more problems that day if 4th position is "top of the list"...!