TheBanyanTree: Trying to connect to ADSL

[JMoney]

Three times I got kicked off the queue today.  It was most disconcerting,
particularly when, every time, I had to go through all the rigmarole of
listening to the welcome, being informed about privacy options, drilling
down through multiple choice selections and being warned of long waiting
times only to find that the queue length was finite, the system would not
tolerate my lingering presence and I was therefore, with a moderately
sincere apology, booted out.

I wonder what a manageable queue length is.  It must be very long since,
when I did finally manage to make a lasting connection, I had to wait over
half an hour, during which time I was subjected to an endless loop of
advertising and patriotic pop tunes, before a live human being spoke to me.
If I ever have to hear another tinny chorus of, "We are one, but we are
maaaannnnyyyyy," I think I might want to hit something.

After I'd explained my problem to my new friend, Tania, given her the order
number and waited for her to do her look-up she came back and said that
since the account was in my husband's name she could tell me nothing.  He
would have to call himself.  She refused even to send a copy of the
confirmation email to our joint email address.  That, she said, would be
construed as actioning the account without authorisation.  So much for one
flesh.  And what a strange, ugly word "actioning" is.

She did give me some good news.  The call centre operates until 9pm.  She
failed to mention whether that was Eastern Summer Time,  Eastern Standard
Time, Central Australian Time, Wozland Time or maybe even Standard Delhi
Time.  Trying to figure out what 9pm her time might mean to me and my time I
asked where she was.  She wouldn't say but she did tell me that the time
there was 6.  Fine.  I assumed 6pm.  It was 4.30 where I was so I suggested
that she must be on the east coast.  Ballarat, she finally confessed.  I'm
so pleased it wasn't Brisbane or points north or I would have been really
confused.  I can't recall whether they have daylight saving there or not.

By that stage I was no longer content.  Tania would do nothing for me, my
husband wasn't yet home and the idea of hanging up now and having to go
through the whole routine one more time was deeply unattractive.
Nevertheless I did hang up.  Resistance, as they say, was futile, but
venting was a sweet allure.  Rather loudly I said to my son, "Where's your
bloody father?  Why isn't he home yet?"  He laughed.  It's a game, of sorts,
that we play.

Normally I wait for my husband to come in but today, feeling aggravated and
energetic, I decided to go out.  Why not?  The rain had almost stopped and
the cloud cover was still thick so it was cool and dry enough to permit
stomping around outside for a while.  I didn't expect that I would be
rewarded with a sight of his actual approach.  Not at all.  His arrival
times are too inconstant for that.  But the second car that turned the
corner was his.  Lovely.  I could tell him all my woes.  I could even put
the blame for all these difficulties on him.  After all, someone must have
emptied the spam folder without checking its contents thoroughly.  I know
that our new Norton was putting BigPond notices in the spam folder because
that's where I found our last usage invoice.  And since I found the usage
invoice he must have been the one who didn't find the sign-up confirmation
email and therefore caused me all the grief I've suffered today.  It's
another game, of sorts, that we play, rather like the one where the bruises
I get from, say, bumping into furniture are attributed to his violent
sleeping habits.

Of course he has no violent sleeping habits.  He's gentle and quiet.  He
kisses me sweetly to say goodnight.  He gives my sore shoulder a good, deep
rub, spoons up to me, puts his arm around me and breathes softly on my neck.
The blame game is just that; a game.  Sometimes I think I blame him for
things he hasn't done so I don't have to blame him for things he has, not
because I'm scared of him but because I'm scared of me.

He's so good hearted that we can play the game and then laugh about it
together.  We know each other so well.  So that's what we did, because I
needed to do it.  And then I ran the dialling choice selection course for
him, gave him the receiver, made the coffee and cut the slice of cake,
deposited them in front of him, put a chair behind him and let him do the
waiting.  It wasn't as long as I'd had to wait.  All those Easterners must
have finally knocked off work and stopped using their employers' phone lines
for private purposes I suppose.  Or maybe they were all eating dinner.

The first thing he did was name me as someone who has authority to deal with
this account.  Then he tried to explain what we needed.  The trouble was
that this stuff is not what he's interested in.  It is not something he
knows anything much about.  This is the stuff he leaves to me.  So I had to
take over.  And finally I was allowed to know our account number, the
override code and our one time user name and password.  Finally, I hope, I
can load the software and install the modem that will give us access to
something better than 7-12 Kbps download speed.

Janice