On Thursday, our Bell satellite dish stopped working. This happens from time to time, and as usual, I decided not to do anything other than compulsively turn the TV set on and off, hoping that the reception would return. My problem solving skills are pretty much limited to magical thinking. However, by, Friday, when the service was still off, I decided to call 1-888-SKY-DISH and ask for help.
After passing through a gauntlet of recorded questions, I reached a man, who had the accent of somebody who was working out of a call center in India. This always gives me a little bit of a thrill, making me feel multicultural and a part of the global village.
I always get chatty when I reach a call center. Different voices cue different curiosities in me. Inevitably, I ask them where they’re living, and often, we have a conversation, of sorts, even if it’s just about the weather, and I always get a visual picture in my head of the person I’m speaking with. Badri, who lives in Mumbai, rides his bicycle to work, is scared of getting married and loves American football. That sort of thing.
However, the guy I had from Bell was in no mood to chat. He was barely able to suppress his irritation with my casual ignorance. As he asked me basic questions I had no answers for, his voice would rise in pitch, his frustration and excitability traveling the 8,000 miles from India to Toronto. This, in turn, made me frustrated and excitable, and I channeled my hostility toward Bell, toward him, eventually demanding to speak to “his manager” (how ridiculous is that?) when he told me– with obvious satisfaction– that I would have to pay to have some technician come to my house to figure out the problem.
“I HAVE TO PAY YOU BECAUSE YOUR SERVICE DOESN’T WORK?!!”
And so, I cut off my nose to spite my face and refused to pay, thus going without TV reception for four days until a thaw came and melted the ice off my satellite dish. It could have been four months.
Usually, my interactions with telephone solicitors and call centers, goes better than that. There was a glorious summer back in the 90’s when I whimsically told the solicitor calling that although I did not want to buy a photo session from the Bay, I would be happy to read her a poem. For the rest of that summer, every week or two, I would get a call from her, or one of her friends, asking me if I would read another poem. I felt like a rock star.
The poem that I read to her, that I happened to be reading at the time I received her call, was Sunday Night by Raymond Carver.
Make use of the things around you.
This light rain
outside the window, for one.
This cigarette between my fingers,
these feet on the couch.
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
the red Ferrari in my head.
The woman bumping
drunkenly around in the kitchen . . .
put it all in,
make use.