blog about it

Today I am catching up on my writing for my blogs and for work. I’m doing it at a restaurant near my home. Not because I needed to get out. I didn’t. I’m here because I competed with a computer and lost.

Yesterday, I waited 12 hours for an AT&T technician to come out an install my phone. I was told that I couldn’t get a smaller window, and that I would have to wait until next week for the same company to prepare the Internet. (???) That was even after I told them I had an old modem on hand and that I wouldn’t require technical support.

No one came to my door. No one called me. And I couldn’t get a live person on the phone—until this morning. By this time, I was ready to pop because of the sheer ludicrousness of the situation. When I did get a person yesterday and today, they told me that the computer was showing that my installations (phone and internet) were complete. (So???)

my feeble argument

“If the technician had bothered to ring my doorbell to see to it that his effort was complete and everything was working he would’ve discovered that there was a problem! What is the point of insisting that someone be present for 12 hours if you’re not even going to follow up in person AT ALL?!

The woman’s response: “Who told you you needed to be home? Was it a recording? Well it wasn’t me.”
“So you’re so busy you can’t see to it that my service that was supposed to be completed yesterday gets done before next week? There’s no one working in my area?!?” She wasn’t happy with me. But it was just as well—now we were even with no superficiality to blur the facts.

She had no empathy for me that her company having forced me to stay home to wait for her technician. That she was not the specific person didn’t lessen the impact one iota. She seemed to not understand that. So, to improve her abilities, I hope she learns the feeling first hand, soon, and returns to work a more compassionate person.

what’s scary about this

It would seem that there are enough machines in place and people without business sense to make some interactions sluggish and woefully uncomfortable. It seems like the workers have become the extensions of the machines. (And I’m sure the reverse was the intention of the inventions of the computers.)

When in the course of human events, the interactions between computers obfuscates the reactions of the people, then there is a larger problem than existed before computers. This is not a dramatic problem for workers; they really don’t get it. The owners obviously are so removed as to not feel it and possibly don’t care. The first woman I talked with this morning, was the only one who sounded like she got it, and cared.

Still, she told me I may have to wait as long as four more days to get the help I need for service that was scheduled for yesterday. A person who was supposed to call within two hours, was replaced by an automated message to deliver the bad news. Of course, I was too put out to accept that. I needed a person to tell me this was so. The people on the phone who reiterated this final blow, seemed grossly indifferent.

a new way of being

The question now is, how do I move forward from here? Do I learn a new way of communicating? I guess I will have to give up on human-ness when dealing with large, sluggish and woefully unresponsive companies. I wonder, if I had chosen a smaller service provider, would I be here in the restaurant writing or at home, online with my phone working.

Tomorrow is my last day before going back to class. I was off this week, and hoped to get things like this done. AT&T ate up yesterday. And I recently got another automated call, that they are going to possibly eat up tomorrow. A service technician will be working in the area sometime until 19:00 and a person (only option is me) needs to be available.

The welcome recording says “Welcome to the new AT and T.” This is new and the service used to be better, so they really are going in the wrong direction.

Home voluntarily is very different from home by force. A twelve (12) hour service window means that this company is WAY TOO BIG!! This is a great time for a competitor to come in and unseat them with a comparable product and truly responsive technical workers.

When was the last time you had to argue against the feedback of a computer to make your truth known? How’d that work out for you?