There are certain phrases
looping through my life 
which I know will be followed
by something unpleasant. The most-often heard of
these is when my wife says, "Honey we have to
talk," and the second is "Honey, I've been
thinking." But not counting those coming from
people to whom I have an emotional and legal
commitment, the phrase which really makes me cringe
is "Your call is important to us, please stay on
the line . . ."
See, I now know the code. When my
wife says, "we have to talk," it means we
have to talk about me. When that computer voice-mail
woman says "Your call is important, " it
means, "We don't care. Our intent is to
frustrate you long enough so you will hang up."
My phone broke. It's no ordinary
phone –– it's a super-duper 2.4 gigabyte
cordless model with a built-in answering machine. The
phone part worked great, still does. You can walk
around the block and talk on it. I wouldn't do
anything as silly as that, but it's great for those
long phone calls when you need to go see Mr. John
midstream. In my case, the only long calls I get are
those from my wife beginning with "I've
been thinking. . . ." but that's another
subject.
What happened to telephones? There
was a time when you could slam them down, knock them
off the table, hit them with a hammer and they kept
on ticking. And they were simple, so simple that my
college roommate and I wired free extensions into one
for an entire dorm floor. These new things are
fragile and complicated. It must be the space program
"technology dividend" that NASA is always
bragging on. NASA, the guys who forgot that an inch
and a centimeter weren't the same thing.
When my contraption answered it
didn't say "Hi, we're not here" but instead
made a noise that sounded like an old TV on full
volume tuned to a UHF station which doesn't exist. It
did that for a while, then emitted a piercing beep
which sounded like Tiny Tim screaming for his life.
Now, it wouldn't be right to
mention brand names here (Panasonic), because perhaps
it's a fluke and I don't want to impugn any company's
(Panasonic) fine name. I bought this machine because
the phone part of the last super-duper telephone/
answering machine (Toshiba) wouldn't work anymore --
just like the one before that (AT&T).
So I called the customer service
line at this company (Panasonic), waited on hold,
read "War and Peace" and then talked to one
of the representatives. She asked me my zip code and
then told me there was a convenient service center in
the next state. A state where they are talking about
a senator named Hillary.
I said this wasn't acceptable
since I was going out of town in a few days and
wanted an answering machine that worked. She
suggested I take it back to the store. I called the
store, one of those big-box electropolises (Circuit
City) and they told me I needed the receipt, the
original box and the exchange period was only good
for thirty days. The phone is two months old.
Original box? I suppose there are
people who keep all the boxes their stuff comes in,
but they probably had to build an addition to their
house. I threw the darn thing away. I expect
warehouse space for original boxes will be a sought-after
option in the House of the Future, just the way
modern home-buyers want something called a "great
room."
So I called that company (Panasonic)
back, re-read "War and Peace" and told them
I couldn't take it back to the store. They referred
me back to the service center. I demanded to speak
with a higher-up.
I did. I guess she wasn't higher-up
enough. Or maybe I'm not higher-up enough. I asked
that they send me, by overnight mail, a new machine
and that I would pay the freight. I said I would be
happy to send them back the old one. It's a good
thing I live near the beach –– because the
translation of what she told me was to go pound sand.
I had no choices left. Because
your call is important to me, I went out and bought a
new answering machine. It's a cheapo- deepo model.
But I'm still keeping the original box.
-end-
January 10, 2000