Without going into too much detail, during my mother’s recent three month hospitalisation, I paid little attention to her finances because I knew that they were all being paid by Direct Debit and so they were nothing to worry about. What loose bills that I did find got paid, and, to be honest, I genuinely thought everything was “hunky-dory”. However, when mum finally got home this weekend, she and my sister went through all her accumulated post and emails and found, to everyone’s surprise, that there had been an unpaid bill for some clothing which amounted to about £25 and, not to put too fine a point to it, there were some rather stroppy follow-up communications that mentioned legal action and brought to mind (not without reason) images of leg-breaking burly men standing upon doorsteps and making threatening noises towards a rather befuddled 78 year-old woman. Hopefully, it has been sorted now, and such things will not become necessary (if they ever were…) but the thing that got me annoyed wasn’t that aspect of it, they are after all just people doing a job, but the lack of opportunity that was given to my sister to explain when she tried to ring up and sort it out.
Maybe you’ve had one of these conversations before, but they are rather a new experience to me, even though I didn’t do the actual “experiencing” myself (which was probably for the best). According to what I was told later (“Objection! Hearsay!” as Jack McCoy would undoubtedly have bellowed...), it went something along these lines…
“It’s about my mother and this unpaid bill…”
“If you are not the actual customer, then I cannot talk to you about it!”
“Yes, but she had a stroke three months ago…”
“I cannot talk to you!”
“She’s been in hospital for the last three months…”
“I cannot talk to you!” and so on…
You get the picture…
So, when faced with someone being totally bloody-minded, I suspect that it was just as well that it was my sister making that particular call, because I think I might very well have burst a blood vessel if it had been me. Now, believe it or not, I am prepared to see things from the company’s point of view, and I’m sure they spend all day having to listen to hard-luck stories, especially during the current economic climate, and I’m sure that it’s a very frustrating job to have to do, but that sense that someone isn’t even prepared to listen to what you’re trying to say to them must eventually bring even the most mild-mannered of customers to the brink of a meltdown if they try to ring up with the most reasonable of explanations and get faced with that kind of response... (“Mr. Magee, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!”)
I’m told that this person really shouldn’t have made it a “data protection” issue and it was quite within their powers to give general advice but instead they chose to make an already difficult situation into a very, very stressful one. I suppose my sister could have asked to be transferred to a supervisor or something, but when you’re up against such an immovable object, even the unstoppable force that my sister is capable of being is sometimes left holding on to a telephone in disbelief.
There does also seem to be a slight modern corporate sense that just because they've sent out a letter or email, then the matter has been sufficiently dealt with, despite the fact that they have not got any way of knowing whether the intended recipient ever actually got it. Their large hammers go crashing about to crack such tiny nuts as we all seem to be when faced with all their might, but might isn’t always right in much the same way as the customer can sometimes be wrong, too.
There does also seem to be a slight modern corporate sense that just because they've sent out a letter or email, then the matter has been sufficiently dealt with, despite the fact that they have not got any way of knowing whether the intended recipient ever actually got it. Their large hammers go crashing about to crack such tiny nuts as we all seem to be when faced with all their might, but might isn’t always right in much the same way as the customer can sometimes be wrong, too.
Hopefully the matter has now resolved itself, although the bank were equally tricky when it became obvious that my mum had also, over the course of three months and a stroke, rather naturally forgotten all her various banking PIN codes, and, because she had wisely not written any of them down for security reasons, had no access to her own money. Again, I can’t really blame them for not just handing them out to anyone who rang up to ask for them, after all, the security of our money should be their primary concern (Hah!), but it’s these tiny little unpleasant surprises that make life just that little bit more infuriating for everyone as they try to get on with their own lives.
Then, sometimes, it’s the little things that take you nicely by surprise. Those little details that you’ve forgotten all about. A couple of years ago, before I found this blog as an outlet for what, for the sake of argument, we’ll still refer to as my “creativity”, I used to write Amazon reviews. I mentioned those here once before and my favourite example (“Morse Lives!”) still lurks over on The Writers’ Blog pages. What I’d forgotten, however, is the Amazon “comments” section, where, much like in Blogland, the great unknown masses of customers are invited to tell you, in no uncertain terms, what they think of your humble thoughts. Luckily for me, the comments on that particular timeless piece of prose were generally favourable and I was able to add my own reply to one of them, which went like this:-
Thank you for your kind words, and for finally confirming to me something that I'd hoped - that such an 'offbeat' style of review might (at the very least) just amuse somebody somewhere and still fulfill its purpose. I'm so glad you "got" it and hope that things have now warmed up in your part of the world.
Morse purists might, of course, question the whole "urn scenario" given his ultimate fate, but I hope my little joke still works*. After watching all 33 films in fairly rapid succession, the voices seemed very vivid to me, which I think is testament to their sheer quality.
*"Kit, tell me joy" (anag) (2,6,4)
So, imagine my surprise when someone, on this damp weekend we’ve just endured, eighteen months after the review was posted and long, long after the product itself had become unavailable added:-
Anagram answer - my little joke - Morse would be proud of you!
I try to play my little games with the world, and for most of the time, the world simply isn’t at all interested, but, just occasionally, my faith is restored.
You throw your little pebbles out into the pond of life and you never know where the ripples are going to end up, and, despite what I might choose to believe, some surprises can occasionally turn out to be pleasant ones.
tattarrattat
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