Barbara J. Hamby

Communication - A Four Letter Word?

Communication doesn’t look like a four letter word. But, my attempts to communicate with the present-day service industries certainly inspire a few. I won’t bore you with the long sad story of trying to get our high-speed internet service installed at our new location. This is my second experience with two different “communications” companies and I’m convinced they don’t know the meaning of the word. Suffice it to say we are still on dial-up and have no idea when we will get back to more modern methods.

When I tried to call the company this afternoon, I was routed to several tape recordings, put on hold for a few minutes, then told by a tape or a human (I’m not sure) that they could not take my call this afternoon because they were already overloaded with calls. I wonder why. I was instructed to hang up and call back again.

I must admit I’m embarrassed about calling the Sears (Kenmore) service department to learn that the dryer door was not closing completely and was causing the dryer to quit. The man who came out on that call was very nice about it. Al put some WD-40 on the door latch and we slammed it a few times and now it’s working fine.

So far, I’ve resisted the temptation to buy a new microwave. The old one works okay, but looks terrible. The shiny, stainless steel, 1200-watt model on sale at Bi-Mart keeps beckoning to me. My convection toaster oven is a joy to use and I should be satisfied to settle for that.

One of the many newsletters I receive is written by a life coach who advocates simplicity. He has just moved to a city from an island where life was much more laid back, so he is fighting the urge to go out and buy things that would look better in his nice, new apartment. I empathize

My joints would like a trip to the spa tonight, but the rest of my body refuses to do the work to get them there. Tomorrow I’ll have another swim and a soak.