Thursday, November 29, 2012

I Feel A Rant Coming On...

I was just over at my mother's house.  Her phone lines stopped working and she was on the phone with ATT trying to get things diagnosed and - fingers crossed - fixed.
  She handed me the phone* because she was fed up with being in voice menu Hell, and this was the 'diagnose it yourself' stuff, which I'm more comfortable with anyway.  It was the 'let's see if you're really the problem' screening, which is always more than a little insulting.  But I persevered, I pressed 1 for English, and 2 for land line, and 3 for 'more than one phone.'  And I got these instructions:  'for the next step you'll need a flathead screwdriver and a corded phone...'
   Say what?
   The nice lady continued.  'You'll need to find the ATT access box. This is usually located on the side of your house...'   It was at this point I handed the phone back to my mother, explained what the nice lady was about to ask me to do, and she hung up.
   ATT wanted me to go outside and hook up a phone to their diagnostic port.  I'm not kidding.  The screwdriver was to remove the screws holding the cover on, and the corded phone was to plug in and test to see if the problem was inside or outside the house.
   You have got to be fucking kidding me.
   I know the phone company - any of them - is evil and awful and dealing with them is an exercise is staying patient while asserting yourself with morons.  I didn't think it could get any worse.  And yet here we are.  ATT wants me to go outside and do their repair technician's job.
   The phone company has clearly taken a page from the grocery store manual, the page where it says 'devolve as much responsibility as possible onto your customers, because they're the root of all your problems.'  I can remember a time when it was technically breaking the law to get into any of the phone wiring, and you had to rent the phone you had.  Now, it seems, the only thing the phone company is responsible for is sending you the bill.
   There are probably four people I know who I would be comfortable with allowing access to the ATT-owned phone access box, including myself.  If I don't want to go outside and start unscrewing ATT's property, why is it a good idea to have a regular customer do it?  Isn't ATT inviting more problems than it solves with this advice?
  Seriously... I have to bag my own groceries and pump my own gas, now I have to service my own phone?  Where does this stop?  Will I soon have to generate my own electricity?  'Cause I can, I produce plenty of methane every day...



* cell phone because her land line was out

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Get Outta My Airport

Have you ever come across someone you knew in an airport?  I mean when you're both flying, and neither of you expects to see the other?
   Isn't it totally weird?
   I was talking to my younger niece yesterday, and she saw one of her old teachers in an airport just that day.  Aside from the freakiness of realizing your teachers are just like everyone else - they even poop - there was the added surprise of seeing someone you know in a completely unexpected setting.  It pushes you off-center, make you uncertain.
  I've had this happen to me twice.  I used to travel quite a lot for a job I had working as a government contractor, and one trip took me through the Brussels airport.*  Yes, that Brussels, in Belgium.  I was walking down a concourse and I saw a guy I'd gone to high school with coming the other way.  This was over a decade after graduation.  We both slowed down, then stopped, and we both had the same expression on our faces:
   "What the hell are you doing in my airport?"
   Very odd.  We exchanged pleasantries for a very, very brief time, less than a minute, then we were both on our way and glad of it.  Afterward I tried to figure out why we were both so eager to get away, and I think it comes down to cognitive dissonance.  The setting was just so incongruous - an airport thousands of miles away - and the meeting so unexpected that his presence clashed with my belief of what should happen in an airport in Belgium when I was flying on business.  This was a person from my childhood, who I never expected to meet again, let alone meet by chance in a foreign country.  I couldn't even imagine the odds of us meeting in a particular concourse in Brussels twelve years after parting ways in San Antonio.
   The second time was more recent, and I was flying back to Burbank after the holidays here in Texas.  I was in DFW, and I saw a woman who was in my improv class.  Though the break was jarring, it was not nearly so odd as the time in Belgium.  I called her name and eventually had to go touch her on the shoulder because she wasn't responding.  She didn't expect to meet anyone in the airport and so thought the 'Heidi' was for someone else.
   Turns out we were on the same flight back to Burbank.  Which is not odd at all, considering how few flights go in and out of Burbank.  But here's the kicker - we were assigned seats next to each other.
   Freaky.

Now, whenever I'm in an airport I have an eye out for a familiar face.  I actually say to myself 'I wonder if I'll meet someone I know?'  I do this to prepare myself for the not-so-remote possibility that I will.  I don't like feeling off-balance, it makes me feel like I'm not in control.  And however true that might be, sometimes I prefer my illusions to reality.
 

*  I was flying Sabena, and they had the hottest flight attendants.  Too bad they're out of business now.