Emma finds no peace in being offline, as she waits and waits for service...
YOU know what I concluded this week? No one cares! I know, it’s a big statement and it’s specifically reserved for my internet provider because yes, we’ve had yet another outage of nearly a week and guess what? They really didn’t care. At all.
I was so infuriated that I Iost it quite spectacularly with the person on the end of the helpline who wasn’t being helpful at all: have you tried turning it off and turning it on again? Have you tried plugging it out? C’mon like! My smallie was in earshot of the call and she looked equal parts shocked and impressed when I hung up. ‘God you really burned that person!’ she said. Oops.
It’s just that it was so obvious they were reading off a prepared script. Once they had established that turning the power off and on again wasn’t going to help, they just launched into this speech how they’d ‘escalate the problem’, (pass the buck more like) and get someone to call me back, but that they wouldn’t be able to tell me when that would happen, because that’s another department and so on, and so forth. If I was feeling more rational, I’d have felt for them, as they were as powerless as my internet.
What is in their power, though, might be to change the ‘on hold’ music to some sort of deep breathing practice, or someone with a nice calming voice telling you that ‘this too shall pass.’
Give me strength!
You might imagine that an enforced break from the internet would be a welcome thing. No mindless scrolling; no watching rubbish on various platforms just because you can; no impulse shopping etc. Nope. I can confirm it’s a royal pain in the hoop and it reminded me how bad regular TV is.
One night’s offering was Callan Kicks the Year 2024. I saw it when it aired first in January and didn’t get too many kicks from it then, and got absolutely zero kicks six months later. A flick through the other few channels offered nothing better besides Emmerdale, which I hadn’t seen in years but it looked like it was the same people shouting at each other. Plus ça change, etc.
Anyway, the internet engineer was scheduled to come between noon and 4pm on the day of the school holidays, so I dug deep and kept it together. Well, I didn’t really: I was at boiling point trying to find various hot spots to get a connection.
At 11.30am a white van pulled in to the drive and I dashed out and all but hugged the guy in the driver’s seat. I was so happy I could barely speak and was offering him a coffee and trying to usher him inside all at the same time. He looked a bit confused, and maybe also a little scared, as he asked ‘are you Emma?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied! ‘Yes, I’m the person that’s spent most of the week on the phone to you. I’m sorry for some of the things I said but sure you’re here now and we’ll drive on.’ There was one slight problem though. He wasn’t the broadband repair engineer. Nope, he was delivering a package that I had ordered before this hell descended. He handed it over and drove off as fast as he could, with my forlorn face gazing at him in the rear view mirror as he sped off.
At 3.30pm my husband rang to enquire if we were back in action: we were not, I relayed. He rang the company and oh dear, they weren’t going to get to us after all that day. Whoopsies. I’m not sure why I was even surprised.
I just find the level of service has gone down so much in recent times. I know someone whose new washing machine broke and they weren’t able to get it repaired for many weeks, without any apology either.
I’m currently being ghosted by someone who did a pretty brutal job on something in the house for me recently. I’m actually over it, if only because my husband said he’d leave me if I didn’t shut up about it. I simply want him to come and see what he can do to make the situation even marginally better, or just undo what’s done. I’ve left countless voice mails, and sent many emails, all reasonable, with no shouting or threats, and they’re all going unanswered.
The only logical thing I can think of is that he has died, but I know for a fact he hasn’t! I wonder could I get on to Joe Duffy to talk about this before he retires? What has happened to customer care? I’m not looking for anyone to go the extra mile, just the mile that I’ve paid for!
In between the red mist that hung over me all week I went to my first road bowling scór the other evening to support my nephew.
Now the first thing I learned is that it’s b-‘ow’ling (as in ‘ow’ that hurt!) and not bowling (as in cereal bowl) which is what I’ve been calling it all my life. That was pretty much all I learned, really, as I was too busy staying out of the way and not distracting the bowlers as they did their thing.
It was a massively enjoyable way to spend an evening and not only was I really impressed by the skill of the two youngsters, one of whom I’m obviously totally biased towards, but also their guts. It’s a bit like golf; there’s no place to hide in this sport unless you want to hop into the ditch where hopefully the bowl didn’t go. I loved it and am already looking forward to my next scór to support another nephew. Why didn’t anyone tell me this was so much
fun?
In another first this week, I attended my first Corpus Christi Procession. My village celebrated its 25th procession on Sunday and I’ve no idea why, but this was my first one and I loved it, so much so that I’m not sure I can wait a whole year to do it again. However, next time I want to be one of the people who holds the canopy along the route, which I’ve learned is called a baldacchino or baldachin. There you go now.
Afterwards there was a cuppa and some top notch baking and it all reminded me how much I love my community The only other good thing that happened this week was discovering a pair of PJ bottom shorts that had been on the missing list, but were tucked into a corner of a duvet cover. Now, that was cause for celebration. It’s the little wins and the little things!
As I write I’m promised the internet engineer is coming tomorrow. Here’s hoping.
