Persistence is Futile. But I want to Assimilate!

November 20, 2010

Some time ago, I don’t mean years, or months, or even weeks; about 10 days ago Dad stopped receiving his newspaper. I won’t mention which because they undoubtedly have much more money to put towards legal fees than do I. The day I discovered this I had just returned from a weekend off from my duties. You see, I happily moved in with my parents when it became obvious that they had become unable to properly care for themselves. I spend weeks at a time there with the occasional weekend or week off to go home to… visit. I have three sisters who gladly relieve me at least two and sometimes three weekends a month, and again at least a full week or ten days a month. I didn’t completely move in. I sort of live out of a suitcase and occupy the same old room that I lived in some forty years ago growing up. Moving on, I returned home to learn that dad had not received his daily newspaper for the last three days, so a call to the circulation department was in order. Now, this particular newspaper is not of the local variety. Although we live in a rural area and the nearest town has a publication of sorts, it is not a daily paper. Dad therefore relies on the paper from the great metropolis that is about forty miles distant, but delivers daily. Well, we both thought.

My call to the papers main switchboard was answered by a rather male sounding voice, which in itself, was a surprise. I don’t know why. I suppose it may be because it has been many years since I was actually out in the workforce and exposed to what normal really is. I shouldn’t be all that surprised, after all, I do have access to the internet and am not completely cut off from the trends affecting our country. In any event the pleasant young man transferred my call to the circulation department whereupon I spent several minutes monitoring my own circulation while I listened to that recorded voice, “All customer service agents are presently assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and someone will be right with you.” Finally after what seemed like hours I hear a different recording. Progress.. “We are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please use our automated system. If you experienced difficulties receiving your newspaper, press 1.” *Beep* “If you did not receive your newspaper today, press 1.” *Beep* “Please enter your ten digit telephone number, starting with the area code, followed by the pound sign.” *Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep**Beep*

And after all that… “Please hold for a customer service representative.” To my surprise, a person then answered the phone right away. I guess all that was just a way to kill some time while an agent became available to talk to me. It didn’t really seem to do anything because the agent then had me dictate all that information to her again. I hate that. Why make us wear out our telephone keypads pushing in all those digits when they are going to ask anyway? These new phone are not made by Western Electric any more. They wear out faster than batteries in kids toy now days. But after all that I got a pleasant “Thank you, we will take care of this right away.” That’s it? Seemed easy enough, once I got to talk to a real person. I was happy, or so I thought.

Day two. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended (like the hawks are gonna swoop down and carry them off,) about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. Well, to this day that trash is still on his desk. He is still wondering exactly what it is and why someone would throw it away. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” All I want is for Dad to have his newspaper. That way, when he returns he will quietly sit and read his newspaper during breakfast. “Yes sir. I’ll send a message to the carrier and we will get this cleared up right away.”

Day three. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” Is there an option if I want to speak to a supervisor? I leave my phone number for the carrier to call. I have hopes of a newspaper by Thursday…

Day four. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” Any chance I can talk to a supervisor? “Please hold.” Finally, someone that will give me the attention that this is due. I have hopes. “Sir, my supervisor is unable to take the call at the moment but I gave her your phone number. She is really good about returning phone calls. You should hear from her today."

Day five. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” By now you are wondering why I am wasting time with this antiquated communications system called the telephone. Why not simply get on the internet, look up the papers site, click on the ‘Contact Us’ link and be done with this nonsense of daily talks to the customer service recordings? You know? I fool around with designing pages such as this. I mean, after all, I have been in the hospitality business for longer than I care to admit, and I have contact us pages for customers to communicate with me. So, I recognize a well planned contact us page. So I did use their contact form on about day two. That day all went as planned. “I didn’t get a newspaper. Circulation was no help. Can you help me get a newspaper?” No worries, right. The next day I fill out the same form and I got a little long winded about how I had called circulation, then sent in the contact us form, explained that I was not all that hard to find, and listed the previous ‘case number’ provided in the email confirmation sent to me to acknowledge receipt of the previous days form. “Your form contains too many characters. Please edit your text and limit the number of characters used to 150.” What? 150 characters? How can you legitimately complain about anything in 150 characters? So that day’s complaint was about how the form did not allow enough room to adequately complain.

Day six. It is now Saturday. Dad makes his usual early morning sojourn down to the highway to check the mail….and his newspaper; which of course, was not there. Another day and again I have to watch him return to the house empty handed. Besides from that I patiently sit and listen to the events of the trip. About the neighbor’s cattle and how the cows leave their young unattended, about how little they have to eat, and then analyze the trash he picked up in the ditch to bring home. Its trash, Dad, let’s put it in the trash. “We are experiencing heavy call volume and all customer service agents are assisting other customers. Please continue to hold or to use our automated system. For English please press 1.” By now I had learned the keystroke sequence and entered them in without even listening to the recordings, and I get a live person. “Mr. Taylor, has anyone called you back yet?” Oh, yes, of course. But I was just calling to say thank you….NOT. Not only has no one called me back, but I still do not have a newspaper! So, I ask the customer service rep (I really don’t know why they call it customer service if they cannot provide any service) for the carrier’s mother’s name so that I can call her to see if I can get a newspaper by Sunday. I never got to speak to a supervisor that day and the call ended quite soon afterwards.

Later, and not very much later I receive a call from a nice sounding lady. “Mom?”, I ask. Well, no, but it was the local distributor. She was quite pleasant and explained that the carrier was indeed delivering a paper to what they thought was the correct address, and after a long conversation about how to recognize the correct location to deliver our paper I get a promise, and a phone number.

Well, things are looking up. I have a real local phone number to contact the actual local distributor in the event I do not receive a paper tomorrow. I really think that if we don’t get a paper the distributor will actually bring it out herself.  Wishful thinking. Tomorrow is another day and I think if I hear one more time about how little the neighbors cows have to eat I’m gonna feed them cows a newspaper distributor.


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