A Whinge and a Wasted Joke.

This being the thirteenth post of the month, what should I write about? Another whinge? OK, another whinge. Today I added two more members of the corporate world to the gathering number who now decline to speak to me. 

 

First we'll  have an update on the local delivery office of Royal Mail. It was confirmed by a post lady I met in the town that her depot no longer takes telephone calls from the general public, in spite of the fact that it exists to serve ... the general public. I already suspected that.

The query I wanted to address concerned the non-delivery of this month's credit card statement from HSBC bank, so I set about trying to contact them. I called the number given on page 2 of last month's statement and set about the task. I was faced with very many hurdles and had to start again very many times, either because their instructions were unclear, or maybe I'd pressed the 8 key on the phone instead of the 9 key and my phone has no backspace to delete it. (It's easily done when you're more than a little stressed.) 

 

The pressing of number keys went on longer than I care to remember. Eventually, however, I reached the final hurdle which promised the prospect of being able to speak to a real human being (although it would probably have been a machine pretending to be human) about the nature of the problem. I was asked by the current machine (probably operating under a John the Baptist delusion) to state the nature of the query, which I did several times in as many different ways as I could think of.  The machine, however, was evidently unacquainted with my all-too-human logic. In the ended I simply said 'I would like to speak to someone.' Ah, now we have a response. I was told to press 1 for this type of query, 2 for that type, or 3 for the third type. None of them was remotely connected with my actual query, and that was the end of the matter. I gave up because there was no other option.

Maybe this accelerating decline in the ability to communicate in the time honoured manner with those who effectively run the cultures of the 'developed' world is happening everywhere. Maybe one day somebody in a position of power and influence will wake up and address the problem. Maybe Excalibur will rise again and King Arthur will return to rid the land of the techno bandits, but I doubt it.

And they weren't quite the end of today's glitches. The transport I had booked to bring me back from the grocery shopping was late turning up and I had frozen stuff in my bag. Hopefully it won't have defrosted enough to make me ill when I come to eat it.

But on a happier note, there's this:

I was going through Sainsbury's checkout when I saw a woman using a self-service till nearby turn and stare at me most pointedly. I questioned whether I recognised her; I didn't. And then she looked away. But then she repeated the long, pointed stare twice more, and my only guess to explain her strange degree of attention was that maybe she'd heard the opening conversation between me and the checkout operator and didn't like it.

'Are you all right for bags,' the operator asked. 'Yes, thanks,' I replied. 'I have two. I'm very well organised. I used to have a third but we got divorced.'