The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 7 of 17)

Btflspk. Wasn't that the last name of the little guy who walked under a perpetual rain cloud in Al Capp's Li'l Abner? If not, transpose a few letters and you have little Joe.

I was recently listing myself for a flight on a computer generated "service." Voice asks me my name. I am glad it is not Glockenspiel and confidently say "Smith, S-M-I-T-H" Tinny, twangy voice says "O.K., I think you said Smith. Press 1, if that is right." Well, this way lies madness and the assurance that I am going to celebrate another birthday on the phone. But I press on, giving flight numbers and destination (Houston) when suddenly the voice tells me that there is no flight #--- to some place in Bolivia.

p>Ah, the marvels of technology. br> -- Diane Smith br> South San Francisco, California /p>

Right on, Mr. Hannaford!

p>Just last night, trying to get some information from VA, I nearly drowned in the automated menu swamp. I made two separate calls, and needed to speak to a real live person for each of them. I didn't get to choose "speak to a representative" until the very last menu, both times. The total time spent in each swamp easily doubled, if not tripled, the time I spent actually speaking to a real, live person. A good time was had by all. br> -- unsigned /p>

Here in Canada the first job an immigrant or refugee gets when he or she steps off the boat is, apparently, customer service. Once we reach a human being at the other end of the phone, odds are pretty good that the person will neither speak nor understand standard English beyond that necessary to make her way to work in the morning and perhaps to order lunch. Same with the people manning the "information" boots at sporting and festival events; they can't give you directions because they live in Montreal or Bangalore or on Mars and they came straight to the venue in their mother's Saab and they have never actually ventured into the venue at all so the map they were handed is hieroglyphics to them and they don't even know how to find their own location much less the location you want to go to.

My bank has automated a lot of its services and seems puzzled when long lines of people still gather to interact with human tellers who profoundly resent the fact that they have to interrupt their conversations to serve actual customers. Recently a bank management person went down the long line at my bank telling us that we could use their automatic systems, and hearing from each of us the transaction we had to do that could not be handled by their automatic systems: money order in U.S. dollars; change for the laundromat; deposit a check in foreign funds; explain secret codes in our passbooks; replace passbook that had been torn to pieces by automated machinery... the list went on and the management person finally went back to whatever it is she normally did, much chastened.

When calling the cable company or any other "tech support" line, one is connected with someone who speaks only Geek (my standard answer now is "It's all Geek to me!") and seems to believe that the people on the other end of the phone are all 12-year-old boys like themselves. Not too long ago I experienced difficulty with my CD drive and tried to call tech support to help me solve the problem. Fortunately my grandson (age 15) drifted past as I was closing in on a towering rage, and said, "Grandma, just open the little door and then close it tight, and it'll run." He was right. I did that and it worked. This is even more fun when the guy on the other end of the phone is not only a Geek, but a Geek who speaks only French.

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