Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

[Lightning Rod]

Have you tried recently to use the phone to conduct business? I'm just talking about everyday things like calling the power company if your electricity goes out, or your cable service if your internet connection and your television go dead. I'm not even going to mention the phone company.

First you have to wade through the automated electronic morass of subdirectories and Barry Manilow songs piped into your ears and then press one for English and two for Spanish and three for Portuguese and four for Hindi and five for Farsi and six for Vietnamese and seven for all extra-terrestrial languages.

Then there is more Barry Manilow music or something really revolting like Kenny G or The Eagles. And finally, if you are exceptionally clever with your phone keypad, you will get a real voice on the line. It will probably be a voice with a heavy Indian accent. If you are able to understand the broken English, then you will find that this person has no capability or authority to solve your problem and you will have to ask to speak to their supervisor.

More Barry Manilow.

Then:

"i'm sorry, my supervisor is not available."

"What is your name?"

"Bambi."

"Bambi what? Could i have your last name?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you that."

"Then how can I complain about your lousy service?"

"You can't. That's the beauty of the system. If there is anything else we can help you with, please call back." Click.

This is why I do not own a cell phone. I refuse to pay ten cents a minute to listen to Barry Manilow or to be insulted by someone speaking from the black hole of Calcutta.

So forget doing business by phone. Go there in person. Bricks and mortar should be your watchwords. If there is not a door that you can walk through to lodge your complaint, then don't do business with them. I want to see a flesh and blood human being, not a robot or a forty dollar a week functionary on the phone from a foreign country.

The whole telephone quagmire is strangely indicative of our modern world in general and of our government in particular. You can't get a real person on the line, you can only be harassed at dinner time by endless tape recordings and solicitors and if you try to protest or respond you get seventeen layers of electronic garble and no possible results.

Try to call your Congressman or your Senator sometime. You'll find the true meaning of representative government. You don't have a snowball's chance in hell of reaching anything but some lonely voice mail box. And you know that Tom DeLay and Teddy Kennedy stay up late into the night listening to these precious messages from their constituents. Sure they do.

If you are an average citizen and are not dressed in a suit of campaign contributions or golfing junkets, then you can count on being put on permanent hold by your representatives, condemned to listen to Barry Manilow for a frosty eternity at ten cents a minute.

In Andrew Jackson's day you could walk up and knock on the White House door and ask to speak to the President. Today you can't get within two blocks of the place without the Secret Service and Homeland Security knowing your religion, the name of your first girlfriend and what you had for breakfast this morning.

The Poet's Eye sees that in this day of amazing communication technology, the people in power over our lives, corporation heads and government representatives, are becoming more and more insulated and removed from the public that they are supposed to serve and represent. Try to call them up and you get a recording.