Real Kato Blog: The Phone

Oh, how I hate the phone.

Yesterday, Melissa talked about her phobia of talking on the phone. It's a subject she's mentioned several times.

I'm something of a telephonophobe myself. I do okay when I'm talking to friends, but I hate talking to customer service people, sales people, pizza delivery people, government people, and anyone else who's interest in talking to me is only to help ensure their own paychecks. If I'm given the choice of using the Internet to accomplish something versus talking on the phone, I will choose the Internet every time.

Here's the thing about the phone: I have this fear that the people at the other end of the line actually have no idea what I'm saying to them. I worry that as soon as I hang up the phone, I will have absolutely no recourse if I get a pizza with green olives instead of jalapeño peppers, if I somehow end up ordering Yoga Booty Ballet, or if the DMV has lost my license plate renewal. There's no permanent record of my conversation, and usually I don't even know who I'm talking to. If the other person does happen to mention his or her name, it always sounds like Jrphlgl Hrwarchow, and I don't have the nerve to say, "Did you say your name was JRPHLGL HRWARCHOW? Is that Jrphlgl with a P-H?"

With the Internet, I get confirmation emails and order numbers, and if I ever need to follow up on something, I can always reference the email correspondence. (Did I mention I almost never throw away old emails?)

Remember yesterday when I discussed replacing my defective cell phone from Cingular? Well, when the replacement I ordered (over the Internet) turned out also to be defective, I figured I had no choice but to call their customer service guy to make sure they understood why I was going to be returning yet another phone. After all, the written instructions that came with the replacement said, "If you have any questions or problems with this replacement, call 1-800-XXX-XXXX". So that's what I did.

After navigating through a lengthy voice mail tree, the guy who answered the phone immediately said "This is Mrchnuu Vwazawat, how can I help you?" Actually I think his name was pretty ordinary, but he said it so soon after answering that I wasn't expecting it. His name could have been Bill Clinton and I still would have forgotten it within milliseconds.

So I had to explain the whole situation to him, and tell him exactly how the original phone was broken, and how the replacement was broken in a different way, and how I had already tried switching the SIM chip to another phone, and how I'd already tried a Master Device Reset on both the original and the replacement. After I explained it to him, he asked a few questions, and I ended up going through the entire story again. It occurred to me just then that my OCD was actually helping me deal with this whole phone situation, because by gum, I wasn't gonna hang up that phone until I made sure the dude knew my story backwards and forwards.

And then the irony of the situation hit me: here I was, doing one of the things that I hated the most (talking on the phone), so that I could fix my cell phone and thereby enable myself to talk on the phone EVEN MORE. What was I thinking?

The happy ending of this whole story was, I did get a cell phone that seems to work, and I also have email confirmations for the entire transaction. And hopefully I won't have to talk on the phone again for at least a few months.

Permalink 3 Comment

Posted by Ken in: life

Comments

Comment #1 from Bake Town (Guest)
2006 May 5 - 11:55 am : #

I hate talking to people I don't know on the phone too.

Comment #2 from Crouching Hamster (Guest)
2006 May 6 - 2:38 pm : #

I love talking on the phone. It can be even better than talking in person, because you can have dirty hair and bad breath, and you won't offend your listener. And it adds emotion that e-mail lacks.

But I really don't want emotion when doing business. And I prefer to have a written record of communication. It holds up much better in court than, "And he said ..." Hearsay and all that.

And when placing a takeout order, I prefer something written as well:

Restaurant: Address?

Me: Three-one-two ...

Restaurant: Six ...

Me: No. It's three-one-two ...

Restaurant: Six?

Me: NO! THREE. THREE. The first number is THREE. Do you understand THREE? There's no math involved! No factorials! It's THREE.

In this situation, when the deliveryboy showed up an hour later, soaking wet from the rain and out of breath, I told him, "Tell that lady who took the order to get off crack. She's ruining your life. And mine."

Then I gave him a big tip. And I now place any takeout orders over the Internet.

Comment #3 from Phil (Guest)
2006 May 15 - 3:01 am : #

Wow -- OCD as a helpful thing. Who'd've thunk it?

Did Cingular give you any minutes credits for the time you spent on the phone with them?

CH -- I have a similarish story about numbers and the phone. But yours is better.

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