“You’re ranting again.”
That’s something that
Caroline seems to feel the need to say to me quite often these days. She may well be right but in my defence, I
appear to be expected to put up with an awful lot of provocation from many
different sources.
I am sure that I really
am becoming mellow with age. The trouble
I am finding is that the world seems be coming more irritating faster than I am
mellowing. It can’t just be me who finds
that. Can it?
It was Andy Rooney, the
American writer who first said, “Life is like a
roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.” He was right and it’s frightening. As you may know, I am well past my
25,000th day and my allotted span of three score years and ten
approaches fast. Is what is seeming to
happen to me more often these days a sign of my age or are they really out to
annoy me?
As I start
writing this (June 21st, two days before my ankle surgery),
today has been a bad day and it’s not even lunch time yet.
I was at
Waitrose at 8.30 this morning but every disabled car park space was already taken
and so, not only was there not enough space for me to open the door and leave
the car easily, I then had to walk (hobble) about 60 yards to the store entrance
once I was out of the car.
The
electric mobility scooter wasn’t in its bay and so I asked for a chair while I
waited for it to be returned. I was told
the scooter had been taken out about half an hour earlier and so I expected it
would be returned soon. Supermarkets do
a lot to help disabled shoppers but there is never any seating inside the store
where people like me may rest our aching joints while shopping. I wonder why not?
After
waiting for about ten minutes I realised that I hadn’t seen the scooter and I
asked customer services if they knew where it was. A Waitrose Partner went to search for
it. When she returned she informed me
that the “lady” who was using it was having breakfast in the cafeteria and
would be at least another twenty minutes.
Waitrose may consider that she’s a “lady” but I think she’s a selfish
b***h.
I had to
buy razor blades. At Waitrose, razor
blades are not kept on the shelves. You
have to take a laminated card from the shelf where the razor blades should be
and take the card to Customer Services.
Then and only then, they will give you the packet of blades. I have had a gentle moan about this often
over the past four years. They tell me
that razor blades are sold this way to prevent shoplifting.
“Then why
don’t you do the same thing for manuka honey?” I asked. “You’ve got jars on the shelf that cost
twenty pounds each and that’s twice the price of razor blades. I could easily slip a jar of honey into my
pocket.”
Today it
was different. The blades were on the
shelf in large plastic boxes. I took a
box, scanned it with the hand held scanner and put it in my bag. Then, I took the bag to the self-scan
check-out, paid and went home.
As soon as
I tried to open the box I realised the purpose of the plastic box. It was sealed and supposedly thief-proof but
after 20 minutes and with the help of a hammer, a screwdriver and a chisel, I
had it open.
I phoned
Waitrose Customer Services for a little chat.
“We are
doing everything possible to answer your call,” said the ‘robot woman’ who answered me. Everything?
Really? Were they installing
extra phone lines and recruiting additional operators while I was waiting on
hold? What a silly message.
When I
eventually spoke to a real person, I told her that their instore security
system didn’t work.
“I left
the store with a sealed, tamper-proof box of razor blades and no alarm went
off, no lights flashed and no bells rang.”
“Oh,” said
the woman, “Something should have happened.”
“Then, when
I got home I eventually managed to open it.
Why isn’t there a sign by the shelf telling customers what to do with
the box once they’ve taken it from the shelf?”
“I don’t
know,” the woman said. “There probably
should be.”
Of course
there should be. I could have severed an
artery in my wrist wielding that chisel.
Later in the morning I
had to ring Nationwide Building Society about a problem I was having with
online banking. The first instruction I was given by the ‘Robot Woman’ who
answered my call was to enter the 16-digit number from my card.
Surprisingly perhaps, I
don’t know all 16 digits from memory and so I had to keep looking at the card
while I tapped in the digits, four at a time.
When I reached the twelfth digit, the ‘Robot Woman’s’ voice said,
“Unfortunately I didn’t recognise your entry.”
I started to tap the
numbers in a second time and again, when I got to the twelfth digit, she told me
that she didn’t recognise the entry.
This time, though, she added that I could press “star” if I needed to
speak to somebody.”
I was put on hold and forced
to listen to dire music. It was a wailing, nasal, American country singer and the
recording was so distorted that the volume level kept changing.
Some companies give the
option of listening with or without music.
I always hear the music.
Otherwise I worry that I may have been disconnected.
A message
was played every 25 seconds!
“Unfortunately,
all our advisors are dealing with other customers at present. Please hold the line and your call will be
answered as soon as possible.”
I was on
hold for 14 minutes and so I must have heard that message more than 30 times.
Do they really think that their callers are so dim that they forget why they
are on the phone and why no one is talking to them?
When I eventually got through I suggested to the advisor that they
play Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat and limit the subsequent apologies to
one every four minutes and as callers will probably be actually enjoying the
music, make subsequent messages short and something like, “We know you’re
waiting.”
I also asked him why I
hadn’t been given the “star” option the first time I rang. Of course, he didn’t know the reason.
I am not a Luddite. I appreciate why there may be a need for
robots to answer telephone calls but why don’t some companies use just a little
common sense?
I tried a ‘Robot Woman’ technique with Caroline: every 25
seconds while we talked about what food we needed to buy for the weekend, I interrupted
and said,
“We are
discussing our food needs for the weekend.
Thank you for participating,”
and do you know what? It
works! However, Caroline became as cross
as I do and began to rant at me to stop it.
Perhaps ranting is nothing to do with age after all.
