A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CORPORATE AMERICA

Not an entire day and I won't give you the whole story because it's too tedious and too long. It started at 10:30 after I'd been having trouble getting an Internet connection. On the advice from Comcast (and a lot of robo messages and dropped connections and holding forever) I went to a Comcast store with my modem to exchange it for another to see if that might be the cause. They said otherwise I'd have to make an appointment for a repair guy to come out and it'd be a few days and I'd have to hang around all day etc. etc.

I couldn't find the store and when I called information and got a number for the Comcast Store on Prospect Avenue in Went Orange New Jersey I got a man's voice telling me I'd reached Comcast new Jersey and the options for reaching people if I knew their extensions or their names or etc. or I could press zero for the operator. So I did.

Then I got the same recording over again. And every time I pressed zero the same thing. Finally I spotted a cop car and asked him if he knew where it was and he did. It was in a mall about a mile away from where the Comcast person I'd spoken to on the phone before I left to go there had told me it was, but he warned me it was hard to find even though it was in a mall because it was down in back, way in back. And he was right.

It was a tiny little space behind what I thought at first was behind the mall, in other words not at the back side of the mall but down below it further back in a tiny spot that you couldn't see until you drove around and down, so obscure I was surprised to find other people even there. The three Comcast people were behind several layers of thick plastic windows with openings to put my modem through while theirs were still closed and then vice versa when they gave me the new one, so no one could slip a gun through and rob them I guess (there was a big sign saying they didn't keep cash etc.).

When I got home and called Comcast, as I was told to do, for the instructions in connecting the new one correctly I got a taped message leading me through it, but the final steps were to open my computer and connect to my search engine and the last steps, but the computer wouldn't connect to the modem! When I called Comcast I got put on hold, sent to taped messages that told me which numbers to push but always ended up with me being disconnected or another taped message that didn't help or sent to someone who said they were in Malaysia, a man, or Southeast Asia, a woman, etc. who didn't seem to get what my problem was though they said they did and told me they would connect me to the tech people who could help me but I was sent back to the original Comcast hold the line static-y music while waiting forever and then given to a Comcast "customer service executive"(!) who couldn't find any record of my account from my phone number despite the fact that one of the taped messages earlier had used the last four digits of that number to verify it was me, and insisted the account number I was reading to him off my bill, which I'd read to the other live contacts I'd had so far and had worked fine was the wrong number because there weren't enough digits in it. He had a tone that seemed to me to imply I was an idiot and couldn't read my account number correctly. When I started to ask for his supervisor he cut me off and sent me back to the same old original robo recording etc.

I had been told if the new modem didn't work try replacing the wifi connection, so I took my Apple airport to the Apple store in yet another Jersey town further away and when I asked if someone could check it they said I'd have to make an appointment. By then it was afternoon, so I said just show me where I can buy a new one. I was sent to a woman leaning against the shelves with the Airports. There were two different new ones, one bigger than the other, but when I asked the woman salesclerk what the difference in capacity was for each, she didn't know and I couldn't find it on the box so she sent me to another woman back at the front of the store.

When I told her what the woman said she explained pretty thoroughly and then a man joined us and added that the best way to install it was to download Airport Utility onto my phone and follow the directions I got there rather than the ones on the computer because they were easier. So I did that and went home to discover that the directions wouldn't even start until I was connected to the Internet but I couldn't connect to the Internet until the modem was connected and it wouldn't connect without the airport etc.

When I called Comcast again I went through the usual crap, including a woman this time telling me my account number didn't call up my account and when she tried using my phone number that didn't exist in their records either, so I remembered my old land line number I haven't used in years and that connected me so she said I hadn't given them my new number. When I told her I know I had and besides I'd been using it all morning with Comcast people without a problem and had been doing it in the years since I changed it she too treated me like I was an imbecile but said she changed it so that would never be a problem again when I called Comcast and then she sent me to a technician who turned out to be a woman in India who was very gentle and good natured despite my obvious frustration and even though my telephone number didn't work with her either but she managed to get my records through my name and the last four digits of my social security number even though all morning everyone kept telling me they needed my social security number but it couldn't be used to call up my records ay-yi-yi-yi-yi....

She got the connection to the computer worked out but then when I tried the downloaded Airport Utility the Apple guy told me to get, it couldn't find the modem so the instructions wouldn't start. I finally called Applecare where a man told me I'd have to buy Applecare because my six month new computer warranty was up. I tried not to go crazy explaining that I had paid for Applecare for three effin' years etc. I finally was given someone there who took me through the steps and I got connected and by then it was 4:30.

And I left out many of the most frustrating stuff. This is Corporate America. We no longer make much that demands skilled and therefore highly paid (or let's say sufficiently paid to be able to make a living) workers but are now mainly a "service" economy, that say, but that "service" is actually out sourced as much as possible or left to unskilled or untrained workers not making enough money who have to face the frustration—and I'm sure sometimes verbal abuse—of people just trying to get help with their "service" but getting the runaround instead because the "customer service" people and even the "technical help" are often clueless or unavailable because they are overworked and underpaid so that some greedheads can own even bigger private jets etc.

Time to ring the bell on this madness.