You can’t get good help desk these days….

 

The reason I prefer automated tech support staff to an actual person is that I can expect an IVR to behave like a robot.  Just now the robot that told me about a repaired outage in my area actually ended her sentence with the word  "dot."  Oops.

To Verizon's credit (and not many sentences begin that way)they do employ actual people and they do answer the phone quickly.  After that, it's all slacker millennial accents, overuse of "ma'am" in a not-at-all-deferential way, and pre-scribed steps toward a lasting solution, by which I mean it lasts for the life of the phone call.  

Hannibal.  And Dorry.  Yes, I am calling them out, ma'am, because, ma'am, you can not use that diagnostic software application they talked you into, ma'am, unless you are already connected to the InTernet (hard T on that Internet)

So I picked a bad month to get back into blogging, it seems. 

Not just because we had a power outage the weekend before NaBloPoMo began, when I could have been banking posts for when I am out of town  (don't act shocked - you would too).  The real failure seems to be in the modem (a silly word that makes me think of Modess -- a sillier word -- and when you put Modem together with a word like iPad, milk comes out of my nose.

For the past 3 days I have had halting connectivity, and I am a little alarmed to discover how dependent I am on it.  (Dependent apparently = addicted.)  I sort of sit and stare, waiting for things to connect.  Sunday, when I had no electricity at all, I  was content until the batteries on everything were used up -- everything except my awesome LED camping lantern.  I was sort of OK reading a book from 5pm - 11, though I felt a little anxious that I ought to be doing something more constructive.  (like playing the mahjong I just discovered in my games folder while waiting on hold for Hannibal to exhale?) 

What grand world scheme did I think I was going to hatch if only I could get connected??  I was just disconnected while writing that sentence.  In fact, earlier tonight, I was disconnected from Verizon's phone line.  The robot said, "we're sorry.  There is no answer.  This call is being disconnected."

Enter Sayid, who talked like an adult, and did provide a better level of information, though it still seemed a little bogus to me.  When I opened with "I'd like verizon to replace my modem," he had a lot of other suggestions in mind.  Once Verizon service told me to reverse the ends on my ethernet cord.  I said, "you realize how nonsensical that is."

Tonight it was Sayid telling me I should  filter the phone in the same room as the modem, even though they use different phone lines.  In my heart, I suspect this is one more thing I can blame ADT Alarms for. 

I said, "It's never had a filter on it,"  and Sayid says, "It may work fine for a while that way, but sooner or later you will have trouble."

"Six years?" I said.  "That is later."
"Well, all we need ma'am is a filter for that phone."

I say to him as I dramatically open drawers that are only immediately within reach, "You seem to know your business, I just find that very hard to----"   And damned if there wasn't a phone filter in the drawer of this very desk.  Seriously?

Sayid offers to call me back in one minute, ma'am, and I scramble around the furniture trying to figure out which wire is which until the phone rings again. 

Now, the line has gone to red again just now, as I was about to say something nice about Sayid.  It’s not his fault, I guess, if you don’t get to read this until much later tomorrow.  Or ever.  Or if I snap on the lantern and go back to a simpler time.