9-11, Practical Jokes, & Telephone Peeves

I wrote this blog several days ago and never got a chance to post it because I had temporarily lost my internet connection. So I hope my mention of 9/11 doesn’t confuse you.

Time has a way of speeding up for me. What seems like something happening only a week or so ago is really almost a month. We get our cats nails clipped when they need it and keep track of the cutting dates. Tiger jumped up on my arm this morning and, naturally, drew blood. But it told me we were probably behind in our schedule. Sure enough, it had been seven weeks since they were last there. Seven weeks and it seemed to me to be only two or three weeks. Same thing is true about this day. Sixteen years ago today the Twin Towers in New York were brought down by terrorist cowards. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but there it is—sixteen years. Lest we forget. Lest we forget. I read in the paper this morning a letter suggesting that September 11 be designated a national day of mourning. I think that’s a splendid idea. We never ever want to forget what happened to us on that fatal day sixteen years ago. It would be nice to have a reminder on our calendars to prevent our ever forgetting.

I recently got a letter from the Arizona Dept. of Transportation about renewing our golf cart license. I wrote them a check, folded the return form along its length, and then discovered that the return envelope was about half an inch too short for the form. So I cut it down to make it fit. And when I moistened the return flap to seal the form and check, the glue didn’t work or was never there in the first place. I could imagine someone in charge of printing forms and envelopes laughing their butts off as they pictured all those recipients trying vainly to make the form fit the envelope, trying vainly to make the flap stick. Okay, so it wasn’t intended as a practical joke, but how much it epitomizes too many of our faceless agencies that can’t do much of anything without screwing things up. A long time ago, when I was in the army, we had a word for it—SNAFU—situation normal, all fucked up. It’s like the Catch-22 “put on hold” that fills our ears with noxious hold music and messages we patiently listen to for twenty or thirty minutes until we get a busy signal and a computer voice telling us, “Your call could not be completed. Please hang up and try again.” GRRR! We seem to have a growing number of snafus in our society today, of which the biggest of all is sitting in the White House. How appropriate for one who loves to blow his own horn that it be a trumpet. Too bad he never learned to play it with a mute.

Another joke of some kind, either practical or unintentional. We just switched out TV, internet, and land-line phone bundle from Dish Network to Direct TV. One of my obligations was to wait for the UPS delivery of a shipping container for returning all of the Dish hardware. The shipping stuff arrived, one small box for the modem and connecting lines, power line, and two phone filters; and one large box for DVR’s, remote controls, and the hardware attached to the outside dish. The directions for packing were extremely specific, showing me exactly where to put each piece in the bottom and top plastic shelves. The box was about 2’ x 3’ x 1’. Most of the equipment went easily into the designated places. But when I tried to pack the LNBF (whatever that is), there was no way for it to fit in the place they said it should go. No way. I fought it for longer than it deserved and then finally cut the hard plastic form to make room for the piece. I’m a reasonably intelligent man who can usually follow instructions for assembling desks and tables and dressers even though the instructions were probably written by someone in a furniture plant outside of Beijing. Someone in the Dish corporation had to be doing a number on customers who bail on them.

And while I’m at it on pet peeves, let’s go back to the phone. Many of us today often need help with one or the other of our digital devices. So we call for technical support. Let’s say you have a problem with your internet connection. The first number you dial gets you to a gigantic answering service located somewhere far far away. You wade through menu after menu of computerized voices telling you where to go. Finally, you hear a human voice. You then go through the ritual explanation of who you are, where you are, and why you’re calling. The live human tells you he/she must transfer you to the department that handles such problems. Hold. “Dum de dum de dum,” you hum for ten minutes until another human voice comes on the line. Again, the ritualized giving of information. Again the need to transfer you to another department. Again, the hold. Again, the new voice asking for the same identifying information. And then, finally, after several hours, you get an answer to your question. Nearly every human voice you’ve worked through speaks too fast or in too heavy a dialect for easy understanding. I’m always left wondering why so many of our technical support experts are from another country, mainly India. Are there no Americans who could do tech support or are we all too stupid?