2003-10-05 - 7:22 p.m.
Something occurred to me at work today: it's very odd that some people feel they must list all their contact information in the signature files on their email accounts... including their email addresses. Phone numbers naturally make sense; I may have decided this medium will not suit our dialogue, and I would prefer another -- and lo, you have conveniently provided me with another. Good stuff. But I can't imagine myself struggling to remember your email address and calling up one of your emails for help only to scroll to the bottom and copy-n'-paste your address. Or, for the "web-savvy," your "addy."It also occurs to me that telephone technology has successfully tempted us to say things that are wholly meaningless, or firmly the opposite of what we mean. Why does Bob's outgoing voice-mail message say, "Hi, you've reached Bob -- I can't take your call right now..."? Have I "reached" Bob? Really? If I need to leave him a voice-mail and have him get back to me, can I be said to have "reached" him? I've reached in his direction, surely, but I have reached a phone switch.
Almost as silly is the innocent-sounding "you've reached the desk of...." This time I reach out to Bob but get only as far as his coffee-stained bureau. I haven't even gotten as far as reaching his damn phone.
(I now sheepishly recall that this is precisely what my own voice-mail message at work says. Mea culpa.)
I must point out that I spent a year of my life working as a customer-service representative in a call-center, and in that capacity I learned an important fact about the telecom world. Phones are not innocent communication devices; on the contrary, they are baneful instruments of intellect-destruction. Buried somewhere in the typical telephone handset is a small unknown device of some otherworldly origin whose pernicious purpose is to drain all the oomph out of neural firing until its holder is a dopey, gibbering mess. Spending only a few minutes in direct contact with a phone is like having your schooling systematically drained out of your skull like some Egyptian mummy set upon by a wizard with a stupid-hook.
Great numbers of people in this world will, when speaking on the telephone, respond to a request for their zip/postal code with a recitation of their telephone area-code, and will act impatient with you if you correct them and ask again.
Greater numbers will, when asked to provide their telephone number with the area code, mention the leading "1" before the area code as if it's part of their number instead of a long-distance dialing signal. It's like saying, "Oh, my number is pick-up-the-phone-check-for-a-dial-tone-dial-1-555..." Thanks for your helpful instructions, O great Mensa-graduate you.
People will phone a call-center, and then when curious about where the center they've reached is located, ask the rep, "Where are you calling from?" All such people will fill uncomfortable spaces in the conversation during which the rep is working on the computer with a question about how the local weather is. All of them. Even after they've been screaming at you for something, and all you want to say is, "the weather? Cold, sir. Cold and bitter. Very bitter."
But the best... the absolute best... is that now and then when you answer the phone with "Hi, thank you for calling Company-I-Work-For, I'm My-Name, how may I help you?"... now and then your interlocutor will ask, "um, are you a machine or a real-live person?" Perhaps they've been speaking to Bob's desk for so long that they've lost touch with any perception of the line between animus and res, between fauna and flora, between human speaker and cold interactive-routing message. "Actually ma'am, I'm a machine, but a fabulously complex one, and I'm sure I can help you out. But may I first start with your telephone number not preceded by your zip code?"
It occurs to me that all the campaigning against permitting cell-phone usage in cars makes a certain amount of sense. Clearly the minds behind the endeavour have twigged to an essential fact that many often miss: that whenever some idiot prattling into a cell-phone accidentally wraps his Buick around a tree trunk, it's likely because holding a telecom device to his head has rendered him confused and unable to discern right from left.
I have an idea. Let's crack open some phones, find these brain-draining devices, and (careful to handle them only with microflex gloves, holding long industrial tongs) deposit them here and there around the set of Jeopardy! Think of the fun watching Alex Trebek so disoriented and dimwitted that he can no longer superciliously mock the stupidity of others! We could win a fortune!
