MODERN COMMUNICATION

Last week the battery on my mobile telephone packed up. No problem. I rang the telephone company, got through immediately (a pleasure in itself), and asked the pleasant young man for a replacement phone. Not a high-tech Blackberry/iPhone telephone, just an ordinary bog-standard telephone that can make calls and send SMS's. Easily done. I would have to change my existing agreement; but the phone cost only kr.1 and it would be with me either Thursday or Friday. Good.

It is now Monday, and no phone has arrived. So I rang the telephone company. This time I did not get through first time, but had to wait in a queue for ages. Finally a pleasant young woman came on the line. I explained what had happened, and asked her to check the status of the order in the system. It was now that the wheels began to fall off.

1. The pleasant young man had not ordered the phone we had talked about, but another, completely different phone.

2. The system had then had a glitch and had cancelled the order.

3. Worst of all, nobody had told me this (before you point out that they couldn't ring me, I should say that they have both my E-Mail and physical addresses).

The poor young woman got a bit of an earful, I'm afraid, before I calmed down, and we did the whole thing again. She assures me that the phone will be with me by Wednesday, and possibly tomorrow (though she can't promise anything). We'll see.

After I had put the phone down, I was left wondering how on earth the earlier communication could have gone so wrong. Was the young man just bored, and anxious to get rid of me? Could he have misunderstood my model choice (no; I picked a model off their website while we were talking, and the one he then ordered is not on their website)? Was there an evil gremlin inside the computer system?

I was left thinking that sometimes, the more we communicate, the less we understand each other.

Walter Blotscher