Good Lovin' Gone Bad
In the 80's I was married to a first generation groovy geek -- a dot-com cowboy with designer glasses, a long, lush mullet, and a selection of leather jackets soft as butter. He brought many important things into my life: my first two children, computers, very fast cars, and last but certainly not least, the cellular phone. (In Australia, these devices are called "mobile phones" or "mobiles". I will use both terms interchangeably since my love affair with them spans both continents.)
We had the first cell phones anyone in our community had ever seen, ostensibly because we had a very sick baby and needed to be contactable, but also because my husband thought they were cool. Mine was the size and shape of a shoebox, heavy as a bowling ball, and I carried it into my History of Psychology class with no small degree of self-consciousness.
Later, we installed them in our car. In retrospect, they were hilarious with their handset connected to their body by one of those old-fashioned spirally cord thingies you only see in retro pics nowadays. I spent hours chatting to friends as I drove up and down I-70, but it was more a toy than a necessity. We were still dating.
I could still walk away, and I did. Six years later I'd moved to Sydney, Australia and rediscovered the public telephone booth. I often found myself stranded in this strange land, and came home raging about the lack of reliable street signs and Telstra's neglect of public phones. Men pissed in the booths. Coins were always jammed in the slots. Drunken kids shattered the glass and vomited on the handsets. This was not the life to which I'd become accustomed.
Probably to shut me up, my partner at the time extended what was to be the most romantic gesture of our relationship. On my first Mother's Day in Sydney, I woke to a strange ringing from the nightstand. There, as exciting as a kitten or a diamond ring, was a mobile phone. It was the modern incarnation, not quite small enough to fit in my pocket but not an embarrassment either. I can't remember why, but I chose Vodafone to be my carrier.
The phone number they gave me, which I have to this day, ends in 666. I don't know of that was prescient or not.
With the exception of a couple of squabbles over roaming charges, my love affair with Vodafone was longer and happier by far than that ill-fated second relationship. It was bliss -- they took my money every month and in return I gained a sense of security as I learned my way around the big city. I worked as a journalist for a while and my 666 number was in the Roladex of queer A-listers across Australia. When I started to work as a psychologist and building my private practice, my mobile phone was my primary connection to the rest of the world. Without it, the career I've developed here in Sydney would look very different than it does today.
We were together for well over a decade before cracks started to appear in the surface. About three years ago, I noticed calls were dropping more and more frequently. I'd lose signal in the middle of the city, once while I was standing directly in front of Vodafone offices. I chalked it up to getting a Blackberry, and told myself that with all the amazing things this super-phone could do, I shouldn't complain that I was starting all my conversations with "If I drop out, I'll ring you right back."
It was only when they started getting bad press that I realised it wasn't me, it was Vodafone. My feelings changed.
The bad PR had a tremendous impact on their rates, though. Ours became another floundering marriage too expensive to leave. Like a lazy, impotent husband, Vodafone had become both the brunt of my jokes and frustration.
Occasionally I'd complain, speaking to one impeccably mannered young gentleman in Mumbai after another. These guys (and very occasionally, women) had obviously been trained to obfuscate as pleasantly as possible. They were so polite it was impossible to be angry with them without feeling like a prat, and anyway directing my frustration at them would have been as futile as screaming at the lawn for not being mown. The company they represented was clearly rotting at the core, and it was no more their fault for taking a paycheck than it was mine for paying the monthly phone bill.
Plus, I'm busy. I run a business and a big, busy household, and I don't have a lot of emotional energy to spare on someone I'm not treating, related to, or actually sleeping with.
Until this week.
Although I'd been counting the months until my contract expired so I could finally leave Vodafone, the lure of their "Infinity Plan" and shiny, easy new iPhone 4s (one for me and one for my eldest daughter, who has been a casualty of this whole dysfunctional relationship) led me to renew my vows yet again.
We were told to go home and sync our new phones to our computers, and then like magic our old phones would stop working and our new ones would come to life. Surprise! That didn't happen. I rang my friends in Mumbai to activate the phones, and was told thank you very much for calling madam, and the service was down at the moment but our new phones should start working within 24 hours, and is there anything else I can help you with madam?
We had that conversation the next night too.
The night after that I got a text message on my new phone! Exciting! I noticed that both my old and new phones had full signal, but I shrugged and checked my message, which was, oddly, from my daughter's girlfriend.
I miss you :( xx.
Now, we are extremely fond of one another in an appropriate in-law kind of way and this was pushing into a boundary we'd happily never approached; it took me about a second to realise that this was a message meant for her true love, my daughter. Somehow my kid's messages were going to my phone. Probably not her most favourite thing ever.
My litany of problems was growing with each call to Vodafone customer service, but their politeness never wavered. This time, after an epic 75 minute conversation (calls had now totalled to over two hours over four days, but who's counting?), I was told I needed to visit a Vodafone shop "at my earliest convenience" to replace one handset and exchange my "invalid" SIM.
I know that with all this talk of SIM cards and interminable customer service conversations, this is heading into tedium (in fact, it may already be there; I'm too annoyed to tell), but hang in there. I'll cut to the chase.
Explaining phone problems succinctly is no mean feat (No! I can hear you exclaiming) but that's what I tried to do at the shop the following morning when I handed both phones over to a gorgeous teenager who was no taller than my nine year old son. She replaced the SIM and handed me my phone with two promises: 1. My new phone would start working within the hour and 2. My daughter's phone would be fixed or replaced by that afternoon.
I noticed, a few hours later between appointments, that neither my old or new phone had any service. I shrugged it off, too busy to worry, thinking it would resolve itself by the time I was finished with my clients.
How many promises would I believe?
As always, at the end of my work day I opened my emails.
"Hi Julie,I tried calling your mobile in regard to a referral we have received for counselling and a man named Anthony answered saying that there has been a mix up with Vodafone."
I read that sentence again and again, blood pounding in my ears, mouth agape in cartoonish horror. I estimated I had no service for about four hours. Four hours of phone calls, text messages and emails being intercepted by Anthony. Who the hell is Anthony and why was he answering my phone?
I dialled my own number from the desk phone, trying to slow my breathing so I could speak coherently.
"Hello?"
"Hello? Who's this?"
"Anthony."
I screamed into my fist.
"Anthony, who are you?"
"I'm the florist."
Anthony (pictured here) was unfortunate enough to be a new Vodafone customer having trouble getting his new phone activated as well. Like detectives, we deduced that there must have been a mix up and that we should go to the phone shop together. I met him at his kiosk in Martin Place and we waited together for his mother to cover for him while I went through his phone reading my messages. It was awkward partly because we were strangers with only one thing in common, and partly because he was as nonchalant as I was furious. His refusal to share my outrage only fuelled it. I had to be angry for both of us. No problem.
I marched into the shop with Anthony two steps behind me. If I'd known him better I would have told him to stop dawdling. We were greeted by another, not-so-gorgeous teenager whose eyes widened when I asked for the manager. She was the manager. I took a long, deep breath because it's just not right to yell at someone else's kid, and tried to explain the situation with the added complication of Anthony, who was standing behind me, shifting his considerable weight from one foot to the other, looking amused and embarrassed and not the least annoyed.
Did she understand, I asked, the security implications here? I explained that I'm a psychologist, which felt a breath away from "Do you know who I am?" but I was genuinely concerned about the safety and privacy of my clients.
She refused to meet my eyes as she nodded that she did, indeed, understand the severity of the problem. I took another deep breath.
"Look, I know it's not your fault. You just work here." She looked up at me and I could see the flush creeping up her neck. Poor kid. "I'll leave as soon as both my phones are fully functioning, okay?"
She nodded again.
"But you understand I'll have to escalate this, right?"
"Of course," she said, with a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.
And so I am. Escalating, I mean. I'm doing it here, as a way of standing up to my long-term partner who has bullied and abused my good faith for too long. I think, I'm pretty sure, I'm nearly ready for a divorce.
We had the first cell phones anyone in our community had ever seen, ostensibly because we had a very sick baby and needed to be contactable, but also because my husband thought they were cool. Mine was the size and shape of a shoebox, heavy as a bowling ball, and I carried it into my History of Psychology class with no small degree of self-consciousness.
Later, we installed them in our car. In retrospect, they were hilarious with their handset connected to their body by one of those old-fashioned spirally cord thingies you only see in retro pics nowadays. I spent hours chatting to friends as I drove up and down I-70, but it was more a toy than a necessity. We were still dating.
I could still walk away, and I did. Six years later I'd moved to Sydney, Australia and rediscovered the public telephone booth. I often found myself stranded in this strange land, and came home raging about the lack of reliable street signs and Telstra's neglect of public phones. Men pissed in the booths. Coins were always jammed in the slots. Drunken kids shattered the glass and vomited on the handsets. This was not the life to which I'd become accustomed.
Probably to shut me up, my partner at the time extended what was to be the most romantic gesture of our relationship. On my first Mother's Day in Sydney, I woke to a strange ringing from the nightstand. There, as exciting as a kitten or a diamond ring, was a mobile phone. It was the modern incarnation, not quite small enough to fit in my pocket but not an embarrassment either. I can't remember why, but I chose Vodafone to be my carrier.
The phone number they gave me, which I have to this day, ends in 666. I don't know of that was prescient or not.
With the exception of a couple of squabbles over roaming charges, my love affair with Vodafone was longer and happier by far than that ill-fated second relationship. It was bliss -- they took my money every month and in return I gained a sense of security as I learned my way around the big city. I worked as a journalist for a while and my 666 number was in the Roladex of queer A-listers across Australia. When I started to work as a psychologist and building my private practice, my mobile phone was my primary connection to the rest of the world. Without it, the career I've developed here in Sydney would look very different than it does today.
We were together for well over a decade before cracks started to appear in the surface. About three years ago, I noticed calls were dropping more and more frequently. I'd lose signal in the middle of the city, once while I was standing directly in front of Vodafone offices. I chalked it up to getting a Blackberry, and told myself that with all the amazing things this super-phone could do, I shouldn't complain that I was starting all my conversations with "If I drop out, I'll ring you right back."
It was only when they started getting bad press that I realised it wasn't me, it was Vodafone. My feelings changed.
The bad PR had a tremendous impact on their rates, though. Ours became another floundering marriage too expensive to leave. Like a lazy, impotent husband, Vodafone had become both the brunt of my jokes and frustration.
Occasionally I'd complain, speaking to one impeccably mannered young gentleman in Mumbai after another. These guys (and very occasionally, women) had obviously been trained to obfuscate as pleasantly as possible. They were so polite it was impossible to be angry with them without feeling like a prat, and anyway directing my frustration at them would have been as futile as screaming at the lawn for not being mown. The company they represented was clearly rotting at the core, and it was no more their fault for taking a paycheck than it was mine for paying the monthly phone bill.
Plus, I'm busy. I run a business and a big, busy household, and I don't have a lot of emotional energy to spare on someone I'm not treating, related to, or actually sleeping with.
Until this week.
Although I'd been counting the months until my contract expired so I could finally leave Vodafone, the lure of their "Infinity Plan" and shiny, easy new iPhone 4s (one for me and one for my eldest daughter, who has been a casualty of this whole dysfunctional relationship) led me to renew my vows yet again.
We were told to go home and sync our new phones to our computers, and then like magic our old phones would stop working and our new ones would come to life. Surprise! That didn't happen. I rang my friends in Mumbai to activate the phones, and was told thank you very much for calling madam, and the service was down at the moment but our new phones should start working within 24 hours, and is there anything else I can help you with madam?
We had that conversation the next night too.
The night after that I got a text message on my new phone! Exciting! I noticed that both my old and new phones had full signal, but I shrugged and checked my message, which was, oddly, from my daughter's girlfriend.
I miss you :( xx.
Now, we are extremely fond of one another in an appropriate in-law kind of way and this was pushing into a boundary we'd happily never approached; it took me about a second to realise that this was a message meant for her true love, my daughter. Somehow my kid's messages were going to my phone. Probably not her most favourite thing ever.
My litany of problems was growing with each call to Vodafone customer service, but their politeness never wavered. This time, after an epic 75 minute conversation (calls had now totalled to over two hours over four days, but who's counting?), I was told I needed to visit a Vodafone shop "at my earliest convenience" to replace one handset and exchange my "invalid" SIM.
I know that with all this talk of SIM cards and interminable customer service conversations, this is heading into tedium (in fact, it may already be there; I'm too annoyed to tell), but hang in there. I'll cut to the chase.
Explaining phone problems succinctly is no mean feat (No! I can hear you exclaiming) but that's what I tried to do at the shop the following morning when I handed both phones over to a gorgeous teenager who was no taller than my nine year old son. She replaced the SIM and handed me my phone with two promises: 1. My new phone would start working within the hour and 2. My daughter's phone would be fixed or replaced by that afternoon.
I noticed, a few hours later between appointments, that neither my old or new phone had any service. I shrugged it off, too busy to worry, thinking it would resolve itself by the time I was finished with my clients.
How many promises would I believe?
As always, at the end of my work day I opened my emails.
"Hi Julie,I tried calling your mobile in regard to a referral we have received for counselling and a man named Anthony answered saying that there has been a mix up with Vodafone."
I read that sentence again and again, blood pounding in my ears, mouth agape in cartoonish horror. I estimated I had no service for about four hours. Four hours of phone calls, text messages and emails being intercepted by Anthony. Who the hell is Anthony and why was he answering my phone?
I dialled my own number from the desk phone, trying to slow my breathing so I could speak coherently.
"Hello?"
"Hello? Who's this?"
"Anthony."
I screamed into my fist.
"Anthony, who are you?"
"I'm the florist."
Anthony (pictured here) was unfortunate enough to be a new Vodafone customer having trouble getting his new phone activated as well. Like detectives, we deduced that there must have been a mix up and that we should go to the phone shop together. I met him at his kiosk in Martin Place and we waited together for his mother to cover for him while I went through his phone reading my messages. It was awkward partly because we were strangers with only one thing in common, and partly because he was as nonchalant as I was furious. His refusal to share my outrage only fuelled it. I had to be angry for both of us. No problem.
I marched into the shop with Anthony two steps behind me. If I'd known him better I would have told him to stop dawdling. We were greeted by another, not-so-gorgeous teenager whose eyes widened when I asked for the manager. She was the manager. I took a long, deep breath because it's just not right to yell at someone else's kid, and tried to explain the situation with the added complication of Anthony, who was standing behind me, shifting his considerable weight from one foot to the other, looking amused and embarrassed and not the least annoyed.
Did she understand, I asked, the security implications here? I explained that I'm a psychologist, which felt a breath away from "Do you know who I am?" but I was genuinely concerned about the safety and privacy of my clients.
She refused to meet my eyes as she nodded that she did, indeed, understand the severity of the problem. I took another deep breath.
"Look, I know it's not your fault. You just work here." She looked up at me and I could see the flush creeping up her neck. Poor kid. "I'll leave as soon as both my phones are fully functioning, okay?"
She nodded again.
"But you understand I'll have to escalate this, right?"
"Of course," she said, with a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.
And so I am. Escalating, I mean. I'm doing it here, as a way of standing up to my long-term partner who has bullied and abused my good faith for too long. I think, I'm pretty sure, I'm nearly ready for a divorce.
Comments
Post a Comment