The Quality Being Monitored May Be Your Own

We should count ourselves fortunate that when, in the pursuit of some damnable transaction or other over the phone, we hear the words ‘for quality assurance purposes this call may be monitored,’ they seem to be talking about monitoring the people on the other end of the line and not us.

The quality rating in the midst of these telephonic occasions issuing from this phone number right here floats between a C- and a D+ on a good day.

If these conversations were to be brought up in a performance review they would merit a rating of ‘needs work,’ or ‘falls short of expectations,’ or even ‘corrective action needed.’

And who’s to say, who’s to say? The criticism seems fair.

I cannot be the only one.

I have noticed this kind of dazed fuzzy-headedness after getting off the phone in the expressions of many of my fellow citizens. They look off into the distance without really seeming to focus and you have to speak to them a couple of times before they notice that a conversation is underway.

I’ve been there, brother!

Personal history shows that we did not manage pre-modern life particularly effectively and we haven’t a chance in the current ecosystem which, while wishing us well in an offhand manner, would not mind seeing us go extinct either.

When it comes time to make such a call, we approach the phone with a good deal of vigor, even bounce, and adopt a business-like manner which seems to say, ‘let’s get this show on the road, ‘ or ‘checking yet another thing off my list,’ or “look on and see how it’s done, my friend.” as we have seen other people do that we admire.

The full head of steam behind the effort endures through the dialing of the 800 number and the instructions by the sweet-voiced woman who presents an interminable series of choices among the numbers on the keypad.

There is a good deal less steam in the machinery now and this listing of hers, which just goes on and on, could be lifted entire and dropped into one of those modernist French plays meant to show the ultimate meaninglessness of life.

Children shouldn’t listen to this list, nor people of nervous temperament, nor people at a vulnerable time of life. It’s just too sad and too confusing to have all these choices presented and finding that none of them apply to you.

We should count ourselves lucky that no negative numbers seem to be involved, nor imaginary numbers, nor the value of Pi worked out to as many digits as possible. And to be fair, I have not yet run across one that makes extensive use of Roman numerals.

Having said that you have said just about all that can be said in favor of these systems.

This – this interminableness – is not dissimilar to being plopped down in ancient times in the middle of one of those labyrinths of old, slapped heartily on the back and wished good luck, while being asked by the bye who your beneficiaries are in case worse comes to worse.

There’s a certain matter of dead-ends and false starts and circuitous routings and, well, more dead-ends and false starts and circuitous routings to contend with, that leave the caller panting, eyes rolling wildly in his head.

A key issue is that exactly what I want to do is never one of the choices presented.

This is deadening to the soul.

If I am given a choice of options that are reached by pressing either 1, 2, or 3, my query almost always seems to lie in the gray area in between, call it 2.5 or 1-2/3rd’s.

And while I grant that much of life is indeed lived right there in the land of in-between, you would have hoped for a little more certainty, a little more clearcuttedness here in the brisk and savvy phone option world.

When you multiply enough of these one after the other, simple advanced nuclear calculus shows that with each step you get further and further away from anything like reality, and at an accelerating rate at that.

If you have called to switch money from one account to the other, by the time you have pushed a series of seemingly innocuous digits you are on the hot line to the currency exchange desk in one of the Spanish bourses.

“The clock is ticking, Senor, do you wish to exercise a put or a call option on the drachma? We cannot let the world markets teeter waiting upon your decision.”

Or, say you do catch some breaks, and instead of listening to one recorded message after another, you hear the unmistakable sounds of what seems to be an actual telephone ringing.

You’ve heard phones ringing before, back in the good old days before you got on this call, and the noises coming over the line sounds just like that.

In fact you’re sure of it. You can tell it’s an actual telephone ringing because no one is picking it up.

A recording would have answered by now, so goes your reasoning, so you are in the strange position of having arrived in the space where actual human beings actually pick up actual phones, but it so happens that no one is picking up this one.

This may be progress, but it’s hard to tell.

The phones then do that ring-over thing, whereby after a certain number of rings, usually six, there’s a mechanical hiccup and the ring gets sent to another phone to be picked up there. Or not.

In every case I’ve been associated with, the phone rings its hopeful six rings, then heads off to another phone where, undeterred, it manfully rings another six times, where, unanswered still but stalwart, it is sent to another phone still where it again takes up the challenge.

Six more rings.

It is my fancy that in this age of globalization this call, my call, isn’t being sent from desk to desk in an office building somewhere, but from continent to continent, spanning languages, time zones, climates, and cultures.

This thought helps to pass the time.

I amuse myself by wondering where I am now.

If I started in North America it would be a natural to slip down the latitudes and ring over to South America.

But then where, I might muse, then where? Across the Atlantic undersea cables I suppose, to London or Paris, both of which I have long had a hankering to visit.

If you want to know the truth I’m sitting there feeling a bit sorry for the phone in Antarctica, which must be the worst cold lonely posting of all, makes you wonder a bit who ends up at that desk, doesn’t it? In other words, who is it that isn’t answering the phone, is it the raw recruit or is it some poor soul on the downward swing of his phone-answering career, perhaps still suffering from some phone answering scandal from years back that still dogs him, the poor devil, it’s funny the turns that life takes…when suddenly someone answers the phone.

This is a bit of an event, and it badly throws me off track, like a downhill skier who has been sailing along with a minimum of friction between his skis and the earth, only to hit a patch of uncovered ground that sends him tumbling head over heels.

I pull the receiver away from my ear and stare at it, partly in wonder, partly I have to admit, in frank bafflement, since I have now forgotten what it was I was calling about.

Somewhere there in my imaginative journeys, call it the Trek of the Unanswered Phones, perhaps somewhere under the Atlantic, I have forgotten entirely my mission.

What was I calling for? What did I want? Why was I bothering these fine people? Is this a bank or a retailer or a funeral home?

Nothing in my mind, which resembles right now one of those great sweeping shots of the Sahara Desert with nary a soul or a piece of vegetation in sight, only the lone level sands stretching meaninglessly away to the horizon in every direction, comes forward in the way of intelligence, nothing clues me in.

In such a case there’s nothing to do but stall for time.

“How may I help you?” the nice young man or woman says, in as reasonable a tone as you could ever ask for.

If only I knew!

I ponder. “Tell me,” I say, full of craftiness, “what is it exactly that you handle at your desk there?”

“We provide our entire range of services, sir; we seek to fulfill your every need, no matter which representative you’re talking to.”

He sounds a little proud saying that, little knowing that this is the last thing I want to hear.

We then enter into a back and forth comedy patter, going something like this, with me speaking first:

“Well, I want to make sure I have the right desk.”

“Any desk will do, sir. Maybe if you gave me the last four digits of your social security number I could look up your account.”

“Well, I don’t like to give that out over the phone.”

“You’ve forgotten it, haven’t you, sir? In that case, maybe you could tell me the name of the first pet you owned?”

“Well, now, I know the pet name that I typed in at the time I set this account up, but if you want to know the truth I had both a turtle and an iguana before that, that I had forgotten about at the time, Rocko and Pedro. Rocko was the turtle. Should I give you their names? They both perished in the same summer though, I’m not sure which one left this world first.”

“Can you tell me your wife’s maiden name, sir?”

Silence.

“[Sigh.] Can you tell me her name at all? First, last, middle, maiden, anything?”

Ha, finally an easy one!

But you know what, it’s a damned funny time for this to happen but right now I can’t for the life of me remember that girl’s name. I must have called her by name any number of times. Forty years of marriage, and I’m always seeing her around the house doing this and that, but for some reason, in this one instance, it’s just not coming to me. Lovely girl though.

Well, this is a conversation that isn’t getting anywhere, and soon enough I make up some excuse for getting off, and after thanking the young person and hanging up the phone, it all comes back to me, my purpose in calling, my Social Security number, the name of every pet I ever owned, and even my wife’s name.

So, you now have a clear understanding of why it is that I’m just as glad these conversations aren’t recorded for quality assurance purposes at my end, but at theirs.

As it is, I’m still scared to death that one of these times the phone is going to ring back and someone at the other end will ask to speak to my supervisor.

Turns out he has something that he thinks she should listen to.