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T A B L E_ T A L K Mother always said ______, and it was true. Pass along your parents' wisest advice in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y I want you so bad Drama Queen The heat is on Black like (white) me A melody of his own making BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. NOT. | PAGE 1, 2
So next week, I'm on to the state Department of Justice and the Public Utility Commission, the same agencies I dealt with last year when I was "slammed" out of MCI by Sprint. I was surprised on a business trip in another state last summer by a polite recording telling me that my MCI card was invalid, and surprised again when I came home and found that all the long-distance charges I'd made in the last month were being billed to Sprint. I went back to MCI, didn't pay Sprint and the charges finally disappeared, but it took weeks and a lot of calls. The same with the $50-some charge on a credit card for a Los Angeles billing service I'd never heard of before, for an e-mail service I'd never used. The same with the restaurant that billed me twice on another credit card. The same with the department store that failed to credit me for returned merchandise and then billed me a collection fee because I hadn't paid for it. All the same: "Your call is important to us, we are experiencing a high volume of calls, we cannot access that number at this time." I've quit using credit cards almost entirely, partly because of this problem. That doesn't help me with the telephone company, of course, but I'm not yet willing to give up my phone. So this week I'm on a cash economy, writing a personal check at a local department store. And the mysterious machine by the cash register rejects it. The clerk gives me a little slip with a 1-800 number and the words "YOUR CHECK WAS NOT APPROVED BY TELECHECK," all in capital letters, like a command. I used a credit card, drove home and called Telecheck ("Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received") and in time spoke with a woman who declined to give me her name but who insisted she could not help me until I gave her my driver's license number, birth date, checking account routing number and home address, at which point she informed that there was nothing wrong with my check, it was just that Telecheck machines didn't like the checks themselves. "The machines have trouble reading your checks," she said. "This has happened before." And then she named the last four merchants to whom I'd written checks, who'd been kind enough to take them anyway. In a way, I was relieved. No one had stolen my identity and left a trail of fraud across the West, as I'd feared during my long wait on hold. No one had emptied my account. "So, how can we stop this from happening again?" I asked. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "You can't. If it happens again, you can ask the merchant to call us. Sometimes they'll do that. Not always, though." What strikes me in these increasingly frequent periods, standing in the kitchen on the telephone listening to the insincere chorus of recordings, is that an essential part of the dehumanization of the economy and the decline of service is the rising attitude that one shouldn't complain. One is supposed to be gracious and, above all, acquiescent. After all, the invisible people who answer my calls tell me again and again it's not their fault, it's a policy, a regulation, a necessary result of volume, it's just the way it is -- they're working stiffs like me and no, they aren't going to give me their names, and no, the supervisor is not available. "We don't have time to check them out," the woman told me, with just enough frustration and impatience in her voice to let me know that, as far as she's concerned, I'm somehow at the root of this problem myself. If I'd stop complaining, she seemed to imply, there wouldn't be anything to complain about. After all, it's just a few dollars. Somewhere in between the meek willingness to be used and the tide of rant and annoyance I keep to myself is the art of the gracious complaint. That is the firm and steady voice, words of persistence and determination delivered in a calm and courteous tone. We are fools if we accept the gargantuan pattern of profiteering abuse built into the information economy, the destruction of privacy, the conspiracy between government and conglomerate to steal a few dollars more. I am slowly pulling myself out of the economy in all the ways I can find -- though I still want a telephone and a checking account -- but almost every day gives me the opportunity to practice the art of gracious complaining. It is an art we all might do well to develop.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some calls to make.
Join the ongoing discussion of Sallie Tisdale's column in the Mothers area of Table Talk.
Service tension Cretinous clerks, woolly-headed waiters, angst-ridden attendants -- you just can't get good help these days.
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