The reason
I was at the telephone shop is one of those complicated modern stories of the
science-fiction world in which we live, which would have been incomprehensible
to all of us twenty years ago – and in the end, rather boring for anyone else
to read, or even for me to tell. It involved a change of internet and telephone
provider, a defective router, the impossibility of sorting anything out over
the telephone with a call-centre, the (already mentioned) defective router
being sent back by mail and then disappearing somewhere in the bowels of the
provider, another router … I won’t go into any more details; those of you
who’ve been unfortunate enough to be in that awful situation when your (in our
weird, wonderful and complex global village) absolutely essential
telecommunications configuration suddenly gets majorly fucked up will know how
I was feeling. The fact that this all happened last summer when I was also
dealing with personal problems like burn-out and depression just added the
icing to the cake.
In fact, I
was lucky. I’d managed to stick to my guns, not lose my temper too badly, have
all the relevant bits of paper together, note the names of the various people
with whom I’d spoken at the call-centre, etc., and finally managed to get it
all sorted out. Today was the last chapter; I was bringing an unopened package
with a new router I’d received via DHL to the telephone shop to hand in there
and get the € 129 in cash back which I had at one stage in the sorry story
shelled out there so that I wouldn’t have to spend weeks cut off from the
internet – one weird phase in this awful story involved a miraculous
multiplication of routers.
Going into
the shop, in which I had spent many frustrating hours over the previous month,
I was glad to see that Gerry, the assistant manager with whom I’d done most of
my negotiating during that time, was on duty behind the counter (so that I
wouldn’t have to start telling my complicated story from the beginning to yet
another person) and that there was only one customer ahead of me. Great, I
thought, five minutes, maximum ten, and I’m out
of here … with my money. End of
story. Game over.
Just one
customer ahead of me. A little old lady, wearing a hat and a shabby,
unprepossessing coat, one of those hundreds of people you hustle past on the
street every day without even registering them. But there was something about
her, a combination of subliminal signals which set alarm bells ringing with me.
This, I realised, could take a little longer than five minutes.
“… and Frau
Müller was supposed to ring me back about a new appointment with the doctor and
then she didn’t and then I tried to phone her and that’s when I realised that
the phone wasn’t working …”
“But you
mentioned that you’d had a letter from the telephone company before that,
explaining that you’d been cut off …”
“Yes, but
Frau Müller had fixed that. A man was supposed to come yesterday morning and
reconnect me.”
“And even
after he was there, the telephone still didn’t work?”
“Oh, but he
wasn’t there. Or maybe he was. You see, I wasn’t there. I had an appointment …”
“But, Frau
Schmitz, if you’re not at home, the man can’t get in to reconnect you!”
I sighed
inwardly. This was probably going to take quite a while. My initial suspicions
had been confirmed by the mention of Frau Müller. It had been the pale, oddly
emotionless face and the slight tremor in the hands that had first set my alarm
bells ringing – typical symptoms of extra-pyramidal side-effects of
neuroleptics (antipsychotic medication). I happened to know that a Frau Müller
worked as a social worker in the local psychiatric hospital, her speciality is
the support of patients who are being released, helping them to re-establish
themselves in “normal” life. This disconnection probably had a background of
unpaid bills – Frau Müller had already achieved a lot if she’d managed to get
things sorted out to the extent where the phone company were prepared to
reconnect. And then Frau Schmitz hadn’t realised how important it was for her
to be at home when the technician arrived to reset her telephone. Shit!
“I had a
letter from the phone company,” Frau Schmitz went on. “Maybe I’ve got it here
somewhere …”
She started
to rummage through her handbag.
“I thought I’d brought it with me, but I
can’t seem to find it …”
“It doesn’t
really matter, Frau Schmitz, it’s Saturday afternoon now and I won’t be able to
reach the technical staff until Monday. And then a new appointment will have to
be made. There may be extra costs involved …”
“Things
will be very difficult without the phone. There are a lot of things I have to
do …”
I felt
awkward. Should I intervene? This was really none of my business. Moreover,
what I felt about the whole situation here was a rapidly reached personal
judgement, based on nothing more than shrewd observation and unfounded surmise.
It would mean me having to tickle the role of Frau Müller out of Frau Schmitz,
possibly outing her as someone with mental health issues in the process. It
would all be dreadfully complicated and would probably result in nothing more
than me getting Frau Schmitz’s back up, embarrassing her and pissing off the
assistant manager in the process, if he got the feeling that I was just playing
the interfering busybody. I decided to keep my mouth shut.
Gerry was
now following another track and had recommended that Frau Schmitz might buy a
mobile phone. She didn’t seem completely opposed to the idea and admitted that
she had had some experience with the devices in the past.
“It was so
much easier when my poor husband was alive. He used to take care of matters
like these. I find it all so difficult …”
 |
| Statue of Eleanor Rigby in Liverpool |
I could see
that Gerry was somewhat uncomfortable. My experience over the previous week had
shown me that the basic function of the telephone shop was not to deal with
customers’ complaints but rather to sell telephones and, above all, contracts,
so that the company could earn certain money, month after month. Such direct
customer-company interfaces are becoming rarer; the telephone service providers
would like their customers to do everything possible on-line – paying people to
do things that software can do is not good business. If problems arise, that’s
what hotlines and call-centres are for. The jobs of the people in the telephone
shop are dependent on the turnover they manage to achieve and dealing with
complaints, trying to give decent advice, etc., all these things take away from
the time available to actually sell what they’re suppose to be selling. As it
is, only the two largest telecommunications firms in Germany still have direct
retail outlets – all the others work through franchisers operating on
commission, and most of these haven’t a clue about the real pros and cons of
what they’re selling. They’re certainly not interested in the likes of Frau
Schmitz who knows nothing about the internet and isn’t interested in a
smart-phone, flat-rate downloads or how many “free” text-messages per month a
particular package will give her.
But Gerry
is basically a decent bloke. He had actually spent around an hour around ten
days earlier trying to find out just what had gone wrong with my contract
before admitting that he – a professional – wasn’t really able to get any
farther than I could on the phone to the call-centre. But he’d stuck at it and
after a further thirty minutes had managed to cast some light on my particular
situation and even work out a somewhat unorthodox but acceptable solution with
me. The last phase of which I was now still waiting to complete.
So he
selected the cheapest, simplest mobile phone the company had on offer and
started to explain its workings to Frau Schmitz.
“Do I have
to put in some sort of number when I want to use it? I don’t like that, I have
trouble remembering it and the last time, after I got it wrong three times, I
couldn’t use the phone at all – it was broken, or something …”
Gerry
assured her that he could take the requirement to enter a PIN out. He asked her
for her bank details. In Germany
“I hope I
have my bank card with me. I know I’m supposed to take it with me but I often
forget …”
Prolonged
searching failed to produce her bank card or even some sort of letter which had
her account number on it.
“It doesn’t
really matter,” said Gerry. “We can arrange it to work with cash as well. But I’ll
still need your identity card; we have to note the identity of everyone we sell
a mobile phone to …”
At this
stage, Frau Schmitz had found three purses and a somewhat larger wallet in her
handbag. All of them were on the counter in front of her and closer scrutiny of
the contents of each managed to produce her identity card and enough cash to
pay for the whole thing. Gerry entered the details from her ID card into his
terminal and spent another ten minutes or so patiently explaining the basic
details of the phone to her, writing down her number for her so that she could
give it to others, having ascertained that text messaging was (and would most
probably remain) a mysterious world which she did not want to enter.
Finally,
she packed all her bits and pieces, including her new mobile, back into her
handbag, thanked Gerry profusely for his help and left the shop …
I’ve found
myself thinking of her – and the many others like her – occasionally since. People
who find surviving and coping in our modern, high-tech, rapidly changing
society a difficult challenge. Forty-six years after the Beatles released the
song, Eleanor Rigby is alive and (still not very) well.
Pictures retrieved from
I clicked on 'Funny', 'Interesting' and 'Cool'.
ReplyDeleteI love you with all my heart, Francis. You describe me so well, with such a kind humour. I was able to laugh at myself. Your patience and your understanding are really cool.
And that clerk is my son. Dear Martin has put me on the Internet, in the last 5 years, and still re-explains to me, every week, slowly, without a hint of irritation, what a browser is.
I feel infinitely sorry for my friends who do not have a Martin and Francis in their lives. They are totally lost and mentally relegated to a universe which has become extinct. May God bless all of you, youngsters of the world, who bring my generation up-to-date with this baffling, exciting technology.
I cannot describe the pleasure I have looking at Glenn Gould, on a big screen, and hearing him mumbling, in my own room, while he's playing my beloved Bach.
And how else, but through a still mysterious box, could I reach an unmet but dear friend, on a Toronto Saturday afternoon, and give him a huge evening hug in Germany? You are no stranger to me, dear Francis. May you, and yours, be well. De tout coeur!
There are few modern inconveniences more hellish than having to sort out this type of nonsense.
ReplyDeleteMy 81 year-old mother will have nothing to do with mobile phones. Even from a land-line, it took repeated persuasion from my brother and me to get her to record a message when she calls us and we don't pick up.
Judging from your essay, I'm thinking she is perhaps better off. As much as I wish she would, I can only imagine how stressful it would be for her to try to use a computer. And she's a sharp-minded, feisty lady!
Nice piece of writing, Francis.
:-)
Oh, Claude, ma cherie, I think you do very well indeed in the virtual world, especially with the wonderful photos and stories you post on Facebook about your work with the Inuit all those years ago. There's nothing wrong with getting help for things - the main thing is that you do them, and so many of your generation don't.
ReplyDeleteGina, my mother is 77 and has been consistently ahead of the rest of her family in the digital world. In the past few months, the iphone has become her favourite toy, because it allows her to keep up with her e-mails, etc. without getting out of her armchair! As she will also probably read this too at some point in the next few days ... Love you, Mam! :-)