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"...!
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