Smoke, Mirrors and the Telephone Company

I need you to call the 'phone company, Michael tells me off handedly and before he can even finish the sentence I can feel my spine stiffening with resistance and my blood running cold, I want to see about adding an 800 number here.

I am calm.

I am resolute.

I am determined.

I am a grown up.

I can do this.

I make a silent vow that I will not lose my temper.

Absolutely, the first rep tells me, I can send you a link and you can do it all on line.

I have my doubts it will be as easy as she would have me believe but I'm willing to try. I open the link she sends and begin to make my way through the process, which to my pleasant surprise, actually turns out to be simple until I get to availability where I hit the wall I've been expecting. There's a problem with your request, I'm electronically informed, Please call your local business service specialist. I start again.

Oh, no, the second rep tells me carelessly, We can't do that. But I can transfer you to someone who can.

The first gnawing teeth of suspicion are starting to navigate up my spine.

I am calm, I remind myself.

I am resolute.

I am determined.

I am a grownup.

I can do this.

I can do this without losing my temper.

Another annoying series of prompts eventually gets to me a recording where I answer all the same questions all over again before I finally get to a recording that actually has something to do with availablility.

If you are in Michigan, Wyoming, Connecticut, Texas or Illinois, press one.

If you are in Vermont, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina or New Mexico, press two.

If you are in Mississippi, New York, California, Iowa or Alabama, press three.

The pencil I've been holding and tapping against my desk snaps abruptly in two.

If you are in Washington, Maine, Delaware, Ohio, North Dakota or Wisconsin, press four.

If you are in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Virigina or Louisiana, press five.

I press five and immediately hear The number you have dialed is not in service.......

With will power I had no idea I even had, I refuse to give in to the urge to repeatedly slam the handset into the wall and pitch whatever remains through a window.

I'm so sorry, the third rep tells me - although if anything she sounds somewhere between bored and amused - let me get you the right people.

I'ld be happy to help you, the fourth rep assures me, but you see, your service runs through the internet and it won't accommodate a toll free number.

Forty five minutes have passed - another forty-five will fly by before I'm done - and I'm beginning to think that the only solution to technology is a strategic nuclear strike.

Are you telling me, I say slowly while I clench and unclench my free fist, that it can't be done?

She patiently explains to me that of course, it can be done, but we would need a dedicated line installed and a separate telephone. She then tells me all the benefits this would entail - we'd know when someone was calling us toll free, we could track the calls, etc.

And the cost? I ask tiredly. She gives me a figure that is eight times what they advertise and I thank her and hang up quickly so she doesn't have the chance to thank me for choosing them, a standard closing that would surely drive me over the edge. All in all, it's the sorriest display of technology as progress that I've seen since the last time.

I relay all this to Michael who looks at me exactly as I expect, as if I've taken some exotic cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs. Before he can tell me I must've misunderstood, I fling my notes at him and tell him to call himself. Maybe he'll get a fifth rep and a better answer.  Miracles happen every day, so they tell me.