A PHOTO CHALLENGE OF PLACES WE SIT…OR MIGHT SIT…OR ART ABOUT SITTING

Re-Welcome to week 46 of the Pull up a Seat Challenge in 2022.

I was trying to parallel process and didn’t finish editing the intro or link to last week’s posts.

Here they are.

• Traveling Nan’s Wanderings
• The Nature of things
• Hops, skips and jumps
• My camera & I
• Geriatri’x’ Fotogallerie
• Philosophy through photography
• Mama Cormier
• Middleton Road
• Blog of Hammad Rais
• Philosophy through photography(2nd)

My excuse-customer disservice

I was on a long phone call trying to resolve a credit card reimbursement from almost a year ago. Going in I assumed that I would be on hold a lot, true, and thought I’d get the weekly post pulled together at the same time. Since this was my third or fourth try to get it resolved over the course of the year I was in a dudgeon, but didn’t want to share the joy.

I tried three different numbers and on the last on I spoke to four different people. They kept saying “I can’t do that, let me transfer you.”

On the first call the person hung up on me (maybe it was accidental?). On the second call they just never picked back up after they put me on hold. I stayed on until the “Doo deee daaa If you’d like to place a call…” message came on.

On the final call the final young man, who I believe did resolve the issue (although I have not yet received the confirmation email), had to put me on hold and call a bunch of different places to confirm that my account was correct and I was due a refund. He was very conscientious and checked back every three or so minutes to make sure I was still there. I didn’t dare hang up because the previous tries they had taken the information, said they would call me back and…crickets.

That final call lasted about an hour, and when it was done so was I, and I hit “schedule” on the post and went away to have a cup of tea. I didn’t realize until this morning that I hadn’t listed y’all’s posts.

I find these calls very hard because I know that the person, even the one who just hung up on me, isn’t the real problem, which is systemic. In this case they had sold me a tour that didn’t exist because of a glitch or problem with the web site posting.

I don’t want to share my black mood with the people answering the phones and trying to help me. So I always try to bottle up my frustration. Especially for the last young man, I could hear his child in the background. He was clearly trying to be kind and professional to me, be conscientious in doing his job, and deal with family. Young people today don’t have it easy.

But corporations do. I’m sure they don’t fix the system because most people will give up, they won’t have the time to stay on hold and the “let me take your information and get back to you” ploy causes people to think they’ve dealt with it, cross it off the to-do list and move on.

Have you had to deal with this type of thing? Do you have a strategy?