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May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Your call is very unimportant to us
By
Jim Mullen
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
My call is very important to them. I know that because they've told me that 600 times already. When they're not telling me that, or when they're not telling me that my phone call may be recorded for "training purposes," they play some jaunty music, like the theme to a quiz show that never made it past the pilot. A quiz show called: "Can You Get a Live Person on the Customer Service Phone?" If you win, you would get your own personal tech guy to live next door to you for the rest of your life. Of course, you would have to move to India, but they'd pay for that. And since the guy next door will be able to get your Skype connection going (sound and picture), you'll be able to talk to your friends and family as if they were right next door … in Pakistan.
Do corporations understand that saying a call is very important to them is different than acting as if a call is very important to them? Just saying it's very important is like telling your wife: "I love you, honey, that's why I think this separation will strengthen our relationship." No, it won't.
I know all the tricks to get live people on the phone -- pretending I don't have a touch-tone phone. Is there anyone left on the planet who still uses a rotary phone? And if there is, why should they go to the front of the line? If you're still using a rotary phone, it's a good bet you aren't spending every waking moment multitasking on your laptop like the rest of us, feverishly pressing zero to get an operator. Corporations are getting wise to that maneuver, it doesn't work as well as it used to. Now you have to try pressing the number-sign key when they start announcing numbers. Or sometimes hit the star key and then the number-sign key.
Still, none of that will help when the only message you get, after they say your call is very important to them, is "for faster service, visit our website." My problem was no Internet. How can I go to their website? How can I even find their number to tell them I have a problem? My address book is up in the cloud somewhere. It felt like the old days when you couldn't call the phone company to tell them that your phone was out of order. The first question the phone person would ask was: "Are you using the phone right now?" They you'd have to explain that you were three houses away, using someone else's phone because your phone doesn't work. That's when you'd find out that your phone hadn't been working for three days, and when the service people tried to call you all they got was a busy signal. "What's a busy signal?" I can hear some 15-year-old asking you right now.
It seems my Internet provider has an unlisted customer service number. I only got it by calling the only number listed for them -- the number to call if I wanted to pay my bill. From there I was able to transfer to the number to call if I was moving and from there I learned the number to call to cancel my service and from there I got the number to call if I was a business, which finally gave me a number to call if I had technical problems. It asked me to punch in my phone number to provide faster service. Forty-five minutes later, a human answered the phone. Finally, all my problems will be solved; and it's about time -- I've got some very important business to conduct.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jim Mullen is the author of "It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life" and "Baby's First Tattoo."
Previously:
Bam! Practical kitchen magic
Poisoning myself
Ban Huck Finn in schools --- even the sanitized version!
$38,000 for traffic and weather updates
2011 Predictions: Nostradamus was a hack
2010: A year of annoying junk
Why do bad things happen to stupid people? Moving on from movie theaters
Money never sleeps, but it does pass out
President Trump kept it classy
Stalking your college kid won't change a thing
Putting my life in Jeopardy
Mo' government, mo' problems
iLostIt
Dressed for excess
Expert tease
The mysteries of Jersey
You are a toilet, where am I?
Don't we all cheat at the game of life?
What happens when I forget where Google is?
Don't let the doorman hit you on the way out
Picasso fiasco
Purple (hair) Daze
Let me hear your body talk
Working from work
Babies deserve clean restrooms, too
3-year-old bear-killers are a thing of the past
Money-making ideas on the fly
Collecting and hoarding
Chain of fools
Please come pick up your acting awards, ESPN commentators, you've earned them
You've been superpoked by the U.S. gov't
e-Readin', e-Writin' and e-Rithmatic
A pose by any other name
Warning: Column contains 2010 spoilers
He loves only gold, only gold
Think about direction, wonder why …
Flushing your money down a diamond-studded toilet
More like wack Friday
The good, the ad and the ugly
The desert of the real
Let books be large and in charge
I was insulting people way before the Internet
GPS drill sergeant: Left, right, left!
Butterfly in the sky, you make winds go twice as high
Music to my ears it's not
You don't light up my life
Fair or not: Country living is far from Little House
A parable for the ages
Top 100 Cable news stories of the century
Green dumb
A developing story
Thinking outside the lunch box
What's good for the goose is good for the scanner
Newspapers will survive, but network TV?
A really big show of generation gaps
When pigs flu
The reports of our decline have been greatly exaggerated
Mergers and admonitions
Invest in gold: little, yellow, different
Stuck in Folsom Penthouse
Collecting karma
Setting loose the creative juice
It's all in the numbers
You're damaging your brain with practical skills
The real rat pack
The unspeakable luxury of the Park-O-Matic
Gross-ery shopping
© 2009, NEA
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