Nov. 18, 2004 - 19:09 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Present

One of those "out of sorts" "off my feed" days for me here. No really special reasons, well maybe there is.

My day started nicely, the sun was up and shining making things cheerful. Breakfast and coffee was good, like it usually is. Heather loving and pleasant like always.

And then, and then, I tried to do business on the net. Just one darn complication after another, one obstacle and questions not pertinent to the subject but that I couldn't answer.

Gave up on one project and switched to another, same luck. So did some routine book-keeping and tried again on the www net. Pooh, I guess I am a stranger in a stranger land.

Thinking about how I came up. Back in those days, (just after the caveman) it was a people type world. If I wanted to talk to Mom at work a step or two and a grab at the candlestick phone, receiver to ear and telling the operator what number I wanted. Voila ! Mom on the other end and we talk. Later there was no leeway and no way to tell an operator what you wanted the Rotary Phone rolled in amid a great fanfare. So the candlesticks had a dial now.

Even so, you knew when you dialed a number a live person would answer the phone. Phoning a company, a switchboard operator would route your call to the right person after you let her know what you were trying to do.

Then miracle of miracles, the Touch Tone horn made its appearance and still you could punch the buttons and get a live voice.

Then the burden was put on the back of us customers. You couldn't even get a switchboard operator anymore, just a bleepin' menu, which didn't give a person any way to get the right department even after listening to the blather on the menu. Most of the time it is impossible to reach a real live person on the telephone now. You listen to the menu, and punch each button in turn, ofter being given another button punching menu which leads into dead end after dead end anyway.

I guess some bean counters figured that the onus should be on the customer and the company could lay off live people, thus saving the company money. Little realizing that many of us have been driven away due to that kind of treatment.

It is all so sterile and to me, useless to try to accomplish a thing. Wasting the biggest part of a productive day trying to accomplish something that communication with a live body would enable me to do what I want to do or find out what I want to find out.

To add insult to injury, today twice I did get a live body, unfortunately neither one could speak understandable English.

Final straw, I gave it up for the day. I'll have at it tomorrow.

Could some one take me back to the day that live persons with intelligence were at one's fingertip on the Touch Tone ? I could sit and listen to the phone ring on the other end for a long time, knowing that there would eventually be a blood pumping, speaking intelligence on the other end who would switch me to the correct extension.

They want my business, then put people on the phone who can put me where I want to be in their company circuit.

If it is supposedly so damn simple to do business on the web why is all the rigamarole so blinkin' complicated and un-navigable ?

Going back and rephrasing an old saw, "The past is gone, the future not here yet, BUT is this my treasure ? The Present . . . . . . . . . .

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