DAILY STORIES and BACK PAGES (personal essays, deep thought, bear scat) WRITERS WHO CAN LAUGH

SUNDAY JOURNAL, NOV 17, 2024 - BLOG EDITION

Middle of the road,

Nov 17, 2024

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Good morning!

It’s Sunday, and I was just now alerted by the sound of an incoming text message to Peggy’s phone. It was a roofer-guy who had looked at our two skylights and finally put together an estimate. they aren’t presently leaking but show a discoloration that indicated they had leaked some previously.

This guy wanted to do several hundred dollars worth of sealing Friday evening while he ordered several thousand dollars worth of skylights to be put in next week.

But he is one of the skylight guys that had even returned our first call, so he had that going for him. At night he taught customer service to other self-employed people at the local vocational school.

Last week I spent several days trying to communicate with the customer service department or one of the rather large website companies, trying to get my domain name changed. I don’t think I was ever completely understood and I finally was told I would have to wait another day or so for migration. My domain may have been hitch-hiking, as it is still not here.

For months, we have been waiting for the government codes department to return calls and help us. Before that, it was months with a radiology company who had coded a bill incorrectly while I was in the hospital.

I guess we were actually fortunate to have gotten past the answer tree and spoken with a real human being in these cases.

People tend to blame our situation of having no customer service on COVID, which caused some supply chain shortages, but moreover, many people started, at least partially, to work from their homes, and many have not moved back into the office, yet because working from home is pretty cool.

We have millions of square feet sitting empty in offices in government and in the private sector.

Then we witnessed the dawning of the gig society where a lot of people decided to give working for themselves a try. I know right here in my town of wonderful charities that can’t help people, groceries that advertise services they can’t deliver anymore, and house builders who can’t honor their construction date because they can’t find drywall finishers. its all a bit sad.

This has all made an impression on me and my business. I will be answering my phone more now and trying to be better at customer service…