Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Process Essay

“Your call is important to us, thank you for calling today and for your patience. We’ll be with you shortly.” Sound familiar? We’ve all heard it. Every time we have to pay a bill A.S.A.P. and forced to waste our lives listening to broken-record recordings and cheesy elevator music. Recently I was blessed with the opportunity to call the newest and biggest phone and internet provider in the Northeast. I was trying, with some prodding from me girlfriend, to get an Internet connection at our new house. Sitting there with the phone plastered to my ear, staring at the blue wall paper in my kitchen like a zombie, thoughts came to my mind of how one can make it through this modern day torture. I figure there must be a way to prepare ourselves for the battle, keep ourselves entertained through the ordeal and get the telephone operators to actually help us.
The first thing to do when making the painful phone call to a gigantic company is to prepare yourself for what is about to happen. You need to sit down in a chair with you phone set down directly in front of you. Close your eyes and say to yourself “It’s going to be a long battle but we can win. We can be VICTORIOUS!” After recovering, develop a good normal pattern of breathing; gather all your focus and concentrate. Grab the phone and dial without looking back.
The next step is to lighten up a little. You know you’re going to be on hold for a lifetime anyway so do yourself a favor. Find that little speakerphone button that almost every cell phone has and hit it. You may now go about your usual business as long as you can hear that god-awful recording in your peripheral hearing. One may find themselves, bagging the trash, cleaning up some dishes or if the mood strikes just right even writing an English paper, all while listening to the madness unfold through the speaker.
So if you make it through and become one of the lucky few that find an actual human, how do you go about getting them to do your biding? The biggest weapon you have is niceness. Everyone has run into that person on the other end that wasn’t hugged enough as a child. By getting frustrated and angry with t his train wreck we just feed into their negative attitudes and becomes counter-productive. Try next time to do the opposite of what they expect. When you do act overly nice or friendly, some may take it as a sarcastic attack but many will actually change their own attitudes or at least try to help you.
These are a few coping mechanisms to take with you and use when dealing with the dreaded phone calls and annoying telephone operators. Try to remember the futility in getting upset with the process but instead chalk it up to a freight train, progressive culture and accept it. You may get lucky once and awhile and deal someone like Andrew, the surprisingly helpful lad working in the Connecticut office of the fore-mentioned telephone line conglomerate. Even though I waited the expected thirty minutes to reach him, he hooked me up with an install and restored a tiny bit of faith in the system.

1 comment:

  1. Humor is tough--no safety net if your reader does not laugh or at least smile. But this got a chuckle or two from me, I confess.

    I'm not a great fan of mock instructions, but these work because of the way you carefully insert yourself into the first and last grafs. That first graf in particular is pretty funny....

    Glad to take it.

    ReplyDelete