Tag: corporate incompetence

But With a Whimper

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

All week we’ve been living in existential dread of an empty oil tank.  Right before the snowstorm on Sunday and Monday we got an email from our oil company saying they would be delivering a shipment on Tuesday.  Looking at the tank gauge I could see we had less than a quarter tank.  And for the last few weeks the temperature had been well below normal and the forecasts said this week would be skirting with sub-zero temperatures almost every night.  Well, no problem.  I planned to spend all of Monday clearing the top driveway and there wasn’t any snow due again for days so all would be well.

Of course, when I woke up Tuesday morning another inch or two of snow had fallen and since I was headed off to work, I got up early and shoveled it down to the pavement.  Of course, I was grumbling the whole time about the usual crummy weather forecasting in the area but what can you do.  When I got home that afternoon the fuel truck had still not arrived but they often came later.  At about four, a truck showed up.  But instead of backing down the driveway he parked in the street in front of the curb cut and after five or ten minutes he left.

So, Camera Girl called up the oil company and reported this oddity.  After speaking to several flunkies who knew nothing, she spoke to a flunky who claimed to know something.  The knowledgeable flunky said (repeatedly) that the driver noted that there were snow and ice on the driveway and due to fear of the truck sliding and even rolling over he declined to come down the driveway.

Now this was pure nonsense.  Every driver in their fleet had come down this driveway many times when there was more residual snow and ice than what was there that afternoon.  The only thing I could think of was that the driver was a temporary hire unfamiliar with the route and didn’t want to back up the long narrow driveway.  Camera Girl complained to the flunky and assured her that the driveway was clear of ice.  The flunky said that the photos from the driver would be evaluated the next day and things would be resolved.

Seeing that she was dealing with idiots she resolved to be proactive.  She told them to send a truck the next day and the driveway would certainly be passable.  I treated the driveway with 200 pounds of sand and convinced myself that no one could claim the driveway was impassable.  But I hadn’t reckoned with the fecklessness of my oil company.  When no one showed up by 3pm she called them up and was told that since they hadn’t heard from us, they hadn’t sent a truck.  She argued that the day before we told them to send a truck.  They claimed they had sent a text message asking us if we wanted a delivery.  She informed them that we don’t have a cell phone so no text message was possible.  They stuck by their story.  She once more asked them if we would be getting a shipment the next day (Thursday).  They assured her they would.  But by 3pm on Thursday when there was no truck, I knew what she would hear.  The same story.  Once again, they claimed to have left a text message.  It was maddening.

So yesterday I stepped back and thought what kind of operation I was dealing with.  Apparently, they only hired idiots that couldn’t be held accountable for their poor performance.  They thought they were leaving me messages.  Now the tank was down around an eighth of the tank and I was worried that in the cold weather the small outlet line might not provide enough suction pressure for the fuel pump.  I was worried we really wouldn’t have fuel after Friday.  I reckoned if they failed me again, I’d go out and buy ten gallons of diesel oil and pour it in the tank just to keep things going.

But I resolved to call them at 6:30 am and tell them to make a delivery today.  And by golly it worked.  They must have thought I was answering the imaginary text message and they sent a truck that got here at 10 am.  As I imagined the driver was a newbie.  He was a young middle eastern man and he confessed he had a hard time finding me because he put the wrong address in his GPS.  I was so relieved that I just smiled and showed him where the tank inlet line was.  Well, civilization will die not with a bang but with a whimper.  Incompetence is the rule now not the exception.  But tonight, the temperature is supposed to reach ten below zero.  I am comforted that Abdul filled the tank.  Oh well.  Grateful for small favors.

We Don’t Send Servicemen to Your House Anymore

photog Current Events ,

Today was an amazing experience.  I get my land line and internet service from my cable tv provider.  Yes, yes, I know.  I should have cut the cable years ago.  But I’m lazy and I also like to watch Turner Classic Movies so I never bothered to figure out a streaming stratagem that would save me some real money.  But anyway, I’m still using these clowns.

So, I get home today at about 2pm and I open my laptop and all my open webpages are MIA.  I restart the Wi-Fi and … nada, zippo.  So, I travel down into the bowels of the earth to check out my modem.  And the worst had happened.  It looked totally dead.  Not three lights or two or even one.  No lights.  I performed the sympathetic magic.  I turned off the power and counted to thirty and flicked it back on.  Once again, zippo.  It was truly and utterly dead.

So, I called up the cable company on my emergency phone.  I’ll have to say these guys have absolutely mastered the science of aggravating non-human communication.  The synthetic female voice they’ve selected is Karen incarnate.  And everything she does and says enrages me.  If she asks me a question, it sounds like she’s finished but just as I try to answer, she throws in an unnecessary addendum and talks over my answer.  She’s relatively deaf and even for an AI she’s really quite stupid.  Finally, she exasperated me so badly that I shouted something at her.  At which point she thanked me for being a loyal customer and hung up on me.  I think that’s the first time I’ve been terminated by a machine.  I think I know now how Dave Bowman felt when HAL 9000 terminated his call after refusing to let him back in the space ship.

Eventually I managed to reach a semi-human.  This was slightly less aggravating.  After about fifteen minutes I convinced this customer service professional that the modem had died indeed.  So, I asked if a serviceman could be sent today to replace it.  She started laughing.  “We don’t send servicemen to your house anymore.  We’ll have it delivered and you’ll install it sir.”  It turns out they would ship it the next day and it would arrive in about two more days, depending on the vicissitudes of UPS or FedEx or whoever they send it by.

I objected and said I didn’t want to be without phone or internet for three days.  She countered that I could pick it up at one of their conveniently located storefronts.  I grumbled “Okay, where is it?”  It turns out it was forty-five miles away.  So, I choked back my rage and said, “Fine.”  And she wished me a happy and bountiful day and asked if I agreed that she had solved my problem to my full satisfaction and then reminded me that Big Brother loves me.

So, I schlepped out the door with the defunct modem sitting next to me in the passenger seat and commuted into the wilds of southern New England with the afternoon sun in my eyes and utter contempt for my cable provider in my heart.  By the time I got there I was calmer and as it turned out the folks at the store were much more helpful and friendly than the telephone drones both carbon and silicon based.  And a mere hour after that I was home and I had the internet mostly running.  But my land line is still not working so I’ll have to call them up still again.

It occurs to me that after living my whole life with instant communication as a living breathing reality the service I receive from my communication company has deteriorated by several orders of magnitude.  Back when AT&T was the whole shooting match, I never lost service and if my equipment wasn’t working properly, they sent a competent repairman out who would fix the problem promptly.  They would never send me to the ends of the earth after first torturing me with an artificial human playing twenty questions with me.

This can’t be the way future is supposed to work.  I have to assume that our civilization has been infiltrated by an evil race of space mutants that have a fiendish plan to slowly drive us insane via cable providers.  Well, it’s worked.  I’ve gone around the bend.  I love Big Brother.