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If
you’ll recall a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a story column about a stray dog
we adopted named Buddy. As I said, picture the Disney movie …"Lady and
the Tramp" and the dog we got is Tramp made over. What has been amazing has
been the number of e-mails and letters I’ve gotten over this article. I’ve
heard from people all over everywhere. Some have mailed letters with pictures of
dogs they’ve adopted from pounds where they live. One lady sent me a long list
and description of each and every dog she’d ever owned in her lifetime.
Another sent me a poem about a pound puppy that she’d had for many years that
finally died. In all of the years that I’ve been writing these things, I’ve
never gotten as much mail on one subject as this one.
Well, I had lunch with a friend of
mine the other day who is what I’d call a real journalist. At least he went to
college to study journalism and at one time had a job where he actually got paid
for writing. I told him about what happened and he said that any article, column
or letter written about small kids and animals would always provoke a response
like this. Well, this got me to thinking that if I wanted to get a ton of
readers looking at this column then what I ‘d better do is to write about
little children and dogs each week. Of course that’s much easier said than
done.
I’ve sat around the house the last
couple of days trying to figure out how to dream up something that would
incorporate these two elements. Not with much success I might add. For example,
if I were to try and put this in a political story it might come out like
this…"Yesterday, the President and his dog went to a Washington
elementary school, where they visited with dozens of small children….."
Not much going for that kind of information is there?
How about sports? "In today’s
sports headlines ….Several prominent baseball players showed up for practice
with their dogs and children…" Nope, that doesn’t start to warm the
cockles of your heart either does it? In looking over these efforts, I suppose
it doesn’t work since it’s fiction and not fact. True to tell; people like
stories they can relate to with their own lives. For example, I generally write
about stuff that happens to me in the daily by and by while I’m here on this
old planet. I’ve had folks come up to me and tell me that whatever they read
last week has happened to them many times as well. Of course, this makes me feel
good, since the way I figure it; if other people have had the same experience
than it somehow means I’m not entirely crazy. At least that’s what I tell
myself anyway.
All of that said and done, the topic
for this week is voice mail. I hate it and I love it. How about you? Just as I
thought, the same. You and I like it because it allows us to get calls from
people we don’t really want to talk to at this time, but might want to talk to
at a later date. It also takes messages when we’re busy or gone from the
phone. I can handle most of that without any problem. It’s the ones that you
get when you call the bank to complain about something they’ve done to your
account. First you get this voice telling you that the options have changed.
What options, you’re thinking? Then, this voice tells you to listen carefully
and asks you to select one of the new options when you hear it. So you wait
while this pleasant voice proceeds to list about 27 different categories during
which you have forgotten why you called in the first place. So, the next step is
to call again after you’ve written down what it was you needed to inquire
about. Then you try to decide where your problem fits. It really makes no
difference since the reason you’re calling doesn’t exist on their menu of
options. Whatever button you press is sure to be wrong.
If you have a personal account the
button you press will always send you to the business department or visa versa.
When you get to the business section, they always act like they don’t know
anything about a personal banking center and suggest you start back at the
beginning of the line again. Some of the more maddening voice mail systems have
little voices that tell you how many days you must wait to speak to a real human
being about your problem. I’ve noticed that real people take your money, but
the banks rely on machines to give it back to you.
You can spend hours and hours
waiting in voice mail limbo. I can’t decide which is worse, the music on hold
or the commercials they play over and over. None of the music is ever any good
and by the time you get through hearing…"We appreciate your patience and
someone will be with you shortly. Please do not hang up as calls will be
answered in the order in which they were received," for the 135th
time, you are not a pleasant person when someone live does actually get on the
phone. Maybe they hire the toughest phone people to handle the callers who’ve
been holding for the longest number of minutes. I’m beginning to think that
the largest companies in this country actually have only one or two people that
are really responsible for handling their calls. You’re so tired and worn out
that any suggestion they make to you to resolve the problem will be fine, just
let me off the phone. "Yes, I know you’ve lost my last 2 deposits, but if
you want to send me a calendar, ok, I just want to sleep." These companies
probably pay big bucks to find out how to brainwash us into passive, meek
individuals.
What I need to do is to save up one
of my dog and kid stories for the bank operator the next time I get one on the
line…"Say, I was in the bank the other day with my son and his dog when
….." As usual send stuff to me via www.pearyperry.com
or in care of this fine publication. I answer everything.
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