Customer non-service

 

         Hatred is a very strong and poisonous emotion. So, I’m not one to throw the word “hate” around willy-nilly. Hatred should be reserved for those who truly deserve it. The people who hijacked airplanes and brought down the twin towers. Adolph Hitler. Darth Vader.

         I don’t “hate” people whose opinions I disagree with. I don’t for example “hate” Ted Cruz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Instead, I marvel at the sheer blast furnace intensity of their stupidity. I don’t “hate” kale. After all, it’s an inanimate object. In fact, I have reached a grudging detente with the noxious green, leafy miscreant, eating it in salads to appease my health-conscious wife.

      But there is something I truly hate. With all of my spiteful and unforgiving heart. Automated telephone customer service lines. And their nearly-as-evil cousin, website service portals with their circular “endless loop” of customer-ditching software.

         Let’s be clear. This method of avoiding people with problems that need to be solved is unrelated to actual customer service. Companies take this approach for several reasons.

1.   They don’t have to hire or pay actual people to answer the phone. This makes corporate profits inch upward. (Read: someone’s third yacht)

2.   Chances are the pesky customer will pass out from their level of frustration and reawaken to forget what their issue was about. 

         I just spent an entertaining and raucous afternoon of listening to Carolyn trying to cope with the cable company’s telephonic purgatory by shouting, bellowing, and finally screeching at her telephone (between throwing things against the wall of her office).

          “Huuuuuuman being. I want to talk to a huuuuuuuuman beeeeeeeing!!!

        Her despair, anger, and frustration boiled out of her office on a snarling red tide of vitriol. It was, I must say, most unladylike. But I felt her pain. A simple task involving adjusting our account information could have been solved by any semi-competent person with decent interpersonal skills in a matter of say, 5 minutes. Instead, three hours of her life was gone, vanished, never to be recovered.

        I wonder if this “one size fits all” approach to communication could be extended to international politics. For example, the famed “red phone” which links our president with Russia’s HMFDIC. (Head Moscow Frupper Directly in Charge.

Recorded Voice: Hello, you’ve reached the Kremlin’s hotline automated response line.

President whoever: I need to talk to Vladimir. Now! It’s important.

R.V. If you’re calling because you’ve detected our missiles on their way to your cities, please hang up and make your way to the nearest underground shelter.

P. W. No, but there’s a major problem. I need Vladimir on the line, now!

R.V. If you’re calling to protest our incursion into Ukraine, hit one on your keypad.

 P.W. That’s not it. Everybody knows that sucks. But so will . . . Okay, if I can’t talk to Vladimir I’ll settle for whoever’s nearby!

R.V. If you wish to leave a message, please hit two on your keypad. Someone will get back to you by the end of the year.

P.W. (clearly losing it) Human Being. I need to talk to a human being.

R.V. For a list of our planned military takeovers, hit number three.

P.W. (screeching and throwing things) Huuuuuman Beeeeeeeing. Huuuuuuman Beeeeeeing!

        Between this and automated checkout machines at stores, it’s clear that soon the reason for humanity to exist will shrink to a short list. 

1. To feed, pet, and walk dogs. 

2.To be ignored by cats. 

3. To post stupid memes on Facebook. 

Okay, Okay, I understand. It's wrong to hate anyone at any time for any reason. But with such an egregious example I'm sure you'll understand if I'm weak. 

 

 

The Extraction (A conversation with simultaneous translation)

 Michael A. Nettleton

 

“So, how was your trip to New Orleans?”

“Fgmbgnbrt!” (Hot and humid. Could we maybe stick with yes-no questions?)

“And the food? I love creole food?” Dr. R. waggled the soon-to-be ex-resident of my mouth back and forth.

“Itmgth waghth exquifgtr!” The etouffee was exquisite. I was strangely proud of getting most of the word exquisite out around the cotton wads, dentist fingers and ominous tooth-pulling vise grips in my Novocain saturated mouth.

Dr. R. levered the wisdom tooth back and forth. “Good job, good job,” she smiled behind her mask. “We’re almost there.”

I wondered if it was part of the psychological unit at dental school. Make the patient feel like he or she is part of a team. All working toward the same goal.

“Good job, good job,” she burbled.

Luckily, my role in the team was sitting in a chair, stoned out of my gourd on nitrous oxide, mouth gaping and drooling prodigiously from gums I could no longer reliably testify were living tissue. If Dr. R was the power forward, I was the team’s water-boy for sure.

After more wrenching, waggling and walloping, the tooth came away. I have a nitrous-triggered vision of Dr. R and two of her assistants bent over backwards with their feet braced against the wall, six hands gripping the forceps, fulfilling their part in the team extraction.

“Good job, good job,” All three of them cheered the effort. I almost expected them to exchange high 5s and fist bumps. I would have joined them; except I was busy spitting blood.

“Mefdgtr Jgrbgl” Good job, good job. I contributed. “Hbvget uh rnfgse?” How about a rinse?

Since my mouth was already pried open with an entire Alabama cotton field of little tubelets, Dr. R. opted to make my day complete by taking care of a little cavity in another part of my mouth. Compared to the extraction, it was a walk in the park. Until . . . until . . . the low-speed drill came out.

“We just use this for a second to grind down a stubborn place,” She said. “It’s kind of a throwback to the old days.” Kachunk, kachunk, vreep kachunk, went the drill. “Good job, good job,” she trilled. “Almost done.” I wondered how much it would add to my bill to have the nitrous turned up to the wildly-hallucinating setting.

I closed my eyes and listened to the drill sound that could have been lifted directly from the soundtrack of The Marathon Man. Dr. R. looked nothing like Laurence Olivier’s sadistic Nazi torturer, but still. I closed my eyes and was suddenly transported back to 1957.

An eight-year-old me sat on a stack of pillows in the chair of our small town dentist whose name I disremember. We’ll just call him Dr. Painmonger. Dr. P, who thought Novocain was a fad that would never catch on, was drilling at an offending bicuspid in my tiny mouth. He used several fingers to pry open my lips to make room for the implement of torture. “Vreep vreep, kachunk, kachunk,” it went. I whimpered. Dr. Painmonger gave me a thump on the shoulder. “Don’t be a crybaby,” he said. “Vreep kachunk. Vreep, vreep,” Tears ran down my cheeks as he drilled. He pulled the device out, still running. “Vreep,”

“No more,” I whined. “It hurts. Bad.”

He slapped me. Hard. “There. Now you’ve got something to cry about.”

When I told my mother what had happened, she tskk tskked me. “Michael Alan, I’m sure kindly old Dr. Painmonger would have have hit you.”

“But he did. He slapped the shit out of me.”

She made her disappointed mother face at me. “I would hate to have in my hand, what you just had in your mouth.”

“But he did.” I insisted. “I won’t go back to him. I’ll let all my teeth rot out before I’ll go back.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mom smiled and patted me on the head. “You’ll forget all about it. Dr. Painmonger is your friend.”

I sniffled. “If you make me go back to him, I’ll . . .

I’ll . . .” I couldn’t think of any kind of a threat that could help me avoid that drill. “I’ll join the Navy.”

After a drive to Coos Bay, my mother and I had a very nice conversation with the Navy recruiter. He told her to bring me back in ten years. But I never returned to be treated by Dr. Painmonger. In fact I avoided dentistry altogether for twenty-something years. Until a dental emergency sent me to a trippy tooth yanker in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I discovered laughing gas and Novocain would distract me enough to get the necessary work done. In fact, they could have pulled my kidneys out through my throat and I wouldn’t have noticed. My reverie ended as the nurse pulled the nose hood off and the effects of the gas wore off.  

I soon found myself standing out front at the receptionist and book keeper’s area of Dr. R’s practice.

“That’ll be 148. 75 for today’s visit,” Nancy said, pushing the credit card device toward me.

I pulled out my Visa and paid the bill. On my way out the door, I could swear I heard Nancy and the receptionist Gayle chant. “Good job, good job.”