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