mar2018.qxp_Jan 2014 Aff 26/02/2018 18:51 Page 18
Midlife Madness 15 Minutes for Goodness Sake!! I imagine that many people reading this will have been in the situation where after waiting for hours on the phone to deal with an issue - in my case sadly I must confess to it often being a complaint - or dealing with an official body of some sort they are told that it can’t be sorted and they’ll phone back. I’m not even going to get in to the fact that you may have spent ages being talked at by a machine that asks you to speak your answers and then says it doesn’t understand well it wouldn’t it’s a blooming machine and usually just as I’m about to launch the phone through a window the machine helpfully suggests that it will put me through to an adviser - thank heavens!!! But its 20 minutes too late and even before talking to the machine of small brain with no social intelligence there will often have been 20 minutes of listening to music which frankly may have helped or hindered my mood depending on what it is, it could have been a happy 20 minutes with the phone on loudspeaker while I bop about the kitchen or …. Well something else altogether. Anyway I’m not getting into that I’m fast forwarding to after I have spoken to a real person explained my problem, possibly explained to another (or 3) real people and still found no answer then they tell me that someone will call me back - with a solution or explanation at least. So if you are anything like I used to be I would sort of put my life on hold - okay so I’d often be in the house as I’m a bit old fashioned and I feel complaints deserve my house phone, but really that is only because my signal in the house remains monumentally useless!! So I’d be sort of going about my business but not straying too far from the phone. We bought the phone in a sale and this may be unrelated but we have never been able to adjust the number of rings before it goes to answerphone so if it
rings and you want to answer it, assuming it is not around dinner time on a weekday evening when it is guaranteed the calls will all be about PPI, home improvements, a household survey that will only take a couple of minutes or any one of a number of charities - so we all ignore it unless my eldest is in a mischievous mood then he’ll answer and try to counter sell! So I either end up almost breaking my leg as I race for the phone if it rings or carrying the phone around with me. But I somehow can’t bring myself to carry the phone with me into the loo. I guess it’s like in real life I never feel very comfortable carrying on a conversation while on the loo! Now generally I am average in that department and would not expect to spend many minutes of the day in the toilet - in the whole day probably less than 10 or 15 minutes and if I add in a shower, (as opposed to a long relaxing bath which could take a long long time) - maybe 20 at most. But don’t you just know it after waiting for hours for a call back it will happen when I - without the phone am in the little room. Simply put there is not a good outcome, if it does ring, maximum of 3 rings - which isn’t enough time to get out of the loo and find phone, then they leave a message so I have to endure another session of ‘music’, talking to a machine and at least 3 other people before I start the whole blooming cycle again. Or the alternative scenario of someone else (whose life hangs in the balance to be fair) failing to pick up the phone assuming it is one of the irritating dinner time phone calls (whatever time of day it may be) OR picks up the phone says they don’t know what it’s about and puts the phone down!!!! Probably time for a nice long relaxing bath.