"Your Call is Important to Us" - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“Your Call is Important to Us”

In the garden of my electronic dreams:

1. Electronics manufacturers and service providers would build better stuff and hire more skilled people to make the gadgets work and the electrons flow instead of hiring script-readers who take an hour of the customer’s time to explain in vague terms why nothing is working and somehow infer that it's your fault for not knowing a superheterodyne bus bar from the Tiki Bar, but, hey, “Your call is important to us.”

2. The FCC and the FTC would DO THEIR JOBS about sneaky offshore billing, foreign and domestic scams, tricky contracts, and corporate bullying of the vulnerable.

3. “Tiffany” and “Brian” at customer service would be honest about what their names really are and what country they are calling from, and that they are working at a ‘phone bank for rotten wages because they were never able to pass freshman English.

4. Any service provider saying “Your call is important to us” would not be executed – not for a first offense, that is.

5. Whatever sick, twisted wretch who generated the latest (Famous Brand Name) series of browsers should receive life with only a slim possibility of parole.

6. InterGossip providers would stop LYING about everything.

7. InterGossip service for the rest of us would work as well as it does for rioters.

8. For every minute a customer is on hold he or she receives a dollar off the next bill.

9. Criminals, not police, would have to wear body cams, and if the cameras didn’t work then the U. K. Daily Mail and the electronic mob would presume guilt.

10. There would be no telephone trees (“If you know your extension…”). Just answer the da®ned phone.

11. Every time a customer receives a message saying “All our lines are busy right now…” the president of the company receives a mild electric shock.

12. Customer service representatives would answer the question that was asked, not drift off into an alternative universe.

13. NO ROBOTS (“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that…”).

14. Every time MicroPlop declares a browser outdated (“heritage” or “legacy”), the customer receives a $500 rebate for the nuisance of having to learn the eccentricities of an unnecessary new dashboard which doesn’t work as well as the old one anyway and which loses all your bookmarks and addresses.

15. Every time a tech company says, “You’re due for an upgrade” instead of “We want to sell you a more expensive ‘phone,” someone gets a spanking.

Bonus: Mark Zuckerberg would be arrested for his haircut, and his barber subpoenaed for testimony.

And, hey, your call is important to us.

-30-

Pre-Broken Icon

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Broken Before You Buy It

Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!

For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.

Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.

Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.

You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.

If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.

Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.

You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.

The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.

But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.

The joy was transitory.

After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.

I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.

And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.

While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.

Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.

Maybe they’re iconic moths.

Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?

Mickey Moth!

Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.

-30-

Pre-Broken Icon

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Broken Before You Buy It

Many American retailers, ever on the trailing edge of progress, have eliminated the need for you to use up or wear out products you buy; the products are now often broken even before you buy them. Instant landfill!

For the benefit of the fashionable, the iconic author of this iconic piece will now re-cast the iconic first paragraph in the iconic contemporary iconic idiom: Many iconic American retailers, ever on the iconic trailing edge of iconic progress, have eliminated the iconic need for iconic you to use up or wear out iconic products you buy; the iconic products are now often broken even before you buy iconic them.

Gentle Reader, you may now employ your own icons.

Two reliable signs of ageing are maintaining hummingbird feeders and bellyaching about how things used to be built better. A friend and I (we both feed hummingbirds) were marveling the other day about how we had each bought an item in the previous week that actually worked, and how functionality had become so rare that it was a topic of conversation.

You see, children, once upon a time long, long ago, back in th’ day, when you bought something – coffee maker, pencil, pocketknife, alarm clock – the item actually worked. You didn’t bother to save receipts because the concept of implied merchantability.

If you bought a coffee pot, the thing made coffee. For years and years.

Pencils from upstate New York – the cedar smelled great when you sharpened them, and they made a nice, clean line.

You sharpened your pencil with your good ol’ American pocket knife, and no one gasped in horror or called in the S.W.A.T. team. If you wanted something fancy in the way of cutlery you bought a knife made in England or Germany, but that was really just for showing off. A lot of us carry American-made pocket knives that belonged to our grandfathers. Those knives do not feature Chinese pictures of Chinese John Wayne or Chinese American eagles; real tools don’t need ornamentation. They simply work.

The nice people in Alabama who assembled inexpensive wind-up alarm clocks out of metal and glass had this archaic concept that an alarm clock should tell time and that if you set it to ring at 0600 it would actually ring – usually somewhere between 0545 and 0615, but then, you were buying plain-vanilla American functionality at a reasonable price and not German craftsmanship at a German price.

But now, over breakfast early this century, it was something of a rare treat to praise a Famous Name Brand product that, although made in China, actually worked.

The joy was transitory.

After visiting with my friend I drove over to Famous Name Iconic pet store to buy a box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats. When I got home and opened the box of Famous Name Iconic doggie treats I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of small, moth-like critters. Now I don’t know about your pups, but mine aren’t much for moths; they’re picky like that. I immediately took the cloud of airborne critters and their box outside.

I telephoned the 1-800-Your-Call-Is-Important-To-Us number and May answered. Now on some other occasion I would be happy to assist May (for some reason I don’t think that’s really her name) improve her rudimentary English-language skills, but my mission was doggie treats. Sometimes it’s all about the doggie treats. So I rang off and emailed to Famous Name Iconic pet store a polite letter in block format stating that I would be returning the box of moths next week in exchange for a box of doggie treats, and that I would like to open the next box in the store to verify that there are no extraneous life forms in residence.

And you know how this will work out -- if you want to play Godzilla and cause people to flee in terror, just go to a store and look like you might need some assistance.

While I was on the ‘net I looked up the name of the company with reference to complaints, and there were lots of ‘em. I don’t know how reliable any of the complaints were. One lady complained bitterly because she had bought a pet rat from Famous Iconic Name pet store and she had run up thousands of dollars of veterinarian bills for her sick rat. Where to begin, where to begin.

Maybe it’s because she had to pay for her rat; my moth-thingies came for free.

Maybe they’re iconic moths.

Say, what do you get if you cross your rat with a moth?

Mickey Moth!

Sorry. I’ll go quietly and iconically now.

-30-