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Someone recently sent me a picture of Uncle Sam, the notorious I want you! finger pointing pose with the phrase, This finger wasn’t meant to push 1 for English! splashed in angry red letters across the bottom.
Pressing “1” for English or “2” for Espanol, or whatever combination exists, is hardly the end of the options on most telephone calls these days. I barely remember my grandparent’s having an old rotary dial phone in their living room. Imagine circling a number rather than just pushing a button! Dialing “0” for an operator would easily take several seconds for the rotary spinner to get back around and if you had to stop for any reason with your finger in mid spin, a different number might register, but I’m only speculating on this as a potential pain in the ass.
My job requires me to spend a great deal of time on the telephone on any given day. Most companies have an extensive list of options beyond the simple English or Spanish. The phone calls I have to make usually are layered, meaning that once I’ve selected an option, whole new menus of options are presented. I can spend several minutes on the phone and never speak to a live person, which I think is most people’s main gripe about what I term auto-tele-mated.
Auto = Self. Tele = phone. Mated = joined. This isn’t such a bad thing. As someone who is required to use the phone extensively, I can assure you that there are times when you just don’t want to speak to anyone. Talking to the wrong person can be even more frustrating than talking to no one at all. Imagine the following scenario:
There is no auto-tele-mated-ness and you are calling your computer manufacturer to find out what is wrong with your computer.
You: “Hello?”
Them: “Computer Company, can I help you?” (You would be so fortunate to get someone so chipper and helpful, but that remains the point to be made.)
You: “My computer isn’t working right.”
Them: “Oh, so and so usually handles that, but she’s out today. Let me see if I can find somebody.”
You: “Thanks.”
A few minutes later (again, if you are very fortunate and haven’t rubbed your bad day off onto the guy who answered the phone) someone else picks up, maybe a guy.
Him: “Hey, this is so and so. What can I do for you?”
You: “I told that other guy, but my computer is broken.”
Him: “Great! Let me get some information from you and I can set you up with a new one.”
You: “I don’t want a new one. I want mine fixed.”
Him: “This isn’t tech support, I work in Sales.”
You: “That’s great, but I don’t want a new one. I want mine fixed.”
Him: “Do you have some kind of special attachment to that computer?”
You: “Nothing out of the ordinary, but it has all my stuff on it.”
Him: “Mmm hmm. Yes, but it’s broken so you can’t get to your stuff anyway, right?”
You: “Yeah, but that’s why . . .”
Him: “Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Yours doesn’t work, I can sell you one that works, we’re all happy. Now if I can just ask you . . .”
Hopefully, you hang up the phone.
That’s actually not a bad scenario. You might have reached someone in accounting or human resources, or worse, the CEO who would insist that nothing is wrong with her company’s products.
Being auto-tele-mated allows you the chance to decipher the company’s babble-speak and figure out for yourself to whom you’re willing to speak. Imagine participating in the above conversation with a Spanish speaking operator when you only know English!
Uncle Sam, with his stoic sneer and accusative finger, may have one time been able to prompt a feeling of low self worth which could blossom into a despotical brand of patriotism by following his finger to the neighborhood recruiter’s office and signing your personality away on the dotted line, but what kind of message do we get about the top-hatted fogey when he’s too lazy to press a freakin’ button on a telephone? A button that will ultimately make his dutiful life easier and spare an excess amount of people from having to listen to old Uncle Sam reiterate how things were better when he was a young fogey. I’m sure that bony old finger has plunged angrily into more than a few rotary dials to tell Mabel that he needs to speak to Sheriff Taylor, “pronto.”
© 2008
Le Meme War Press
