Verizon Rains..Er, Reigns

You all may wonder where I disappeared to. Well my phone has been out of order. Since I use dial-up, so has my computer. Yesterday, I called from the Captain's Wheel. 1-800-483-1000.

I get this nice lady who starts asking me questions. It soon became apparent that instead of a nice lady, I was having a conversation with a computer. This is not easy. (I wonder if they have an area at Hewlett-Packard that manufactures nice ladies for the phone company?) Well, I digress... This is what took place.

Q: Are you calling from the phone that you are having trouble with?
A: No! If the damned thing worked well enough to call you on it, I wouldn't have bothered you.

Q: I did not understand your answer. Please answer yes or no.
A: No.

Q: Do you have a dial tone?
A: No.

Q: If we have scheduling problems, can we reach you at this number?
A: No, I told you It's broke.

Q: We will have someone out to fix it tomorrow between 8:00 AM and 12:00 NOON. If it is our wiring it will cost you nothing. If it is yours, the first :30 will cost you $91.00.
A: Say What??

Q: I'm sorry, I didn't understand your answer. Please answer yes or no.
A: OK, fine, thank you...

Obvious to me are two things. One, a computer has more patience than I, and is much more polite. It was their wiring, and I was not charged.

The fact that the outage was coincidental to my try-out of the new weed eater I bought was not brought up. Anyway, I'm back...