Back in high school, I took part in every spring musical. Senior year, we performed “Little Mary Sunshine,” a play so obscure, there are only trace samplings on the internet. One of the songs I can’t find, includes the refrain; “Nothing that concerns you has happened. *Echoing chorus sings, “Has happened…” and again, “Nothing that concerns you has taken place!”
Right now, waiting for a surgeon and a team to take ownership of me as a patient, feels like singing this forgotten song. The problem with this absurd and seemingly unending wait, is when I complain I’m told not to worry. Cancer moves slowly. It’s treatable. Couple that with it now being two months since we found out, and I want to go Julia Sugarbaker on everyone. “It’s fine to tell everyone you’ll do the worrying, but you don’t have to do the living with it.” –which is a nicer version than hers. I’m tired of empathy; I want action.
Which brings me to today’s slice of ordinary life, a perfect example of how frustrating the real world is in all of its disorganizational glory. My son’s bus came home forty-five minutes late. There was no email or notice of any kind, just forty-five minutes where we were waiting for him. The people on the bus explained that the school failed to dismiss on time. The phone at the school went to an answering machine that doesn’t take messages. The message to parents calling the school by the absence of a means of communication…”Nothing that concerns you has happened…” “Nothing that concerns you has taken place.”
I dislike this meme. It seems more and more prevalent everywhere. I want something better.
Because we have so many doctors appointments, I’ve had to cancel my annual physical. Twenty-seven minutes on hold to cancel and reschedule and the person who answered the phone could not find the appointment and told me to call back the next day. However, if I failed to cancel said appointment in a timely fashion (more than 24 hours in advance), and we’d be assessed a convenience fee for our trouble. We’re responsible, we’re to be charged, and it’s not anyone’s problem but ours if we can’t reorganize the plans to our satisfaction…fun.
So I propose a way for all of us on hold, out of the loop, in need, waiting for someone other than Godot to show up, to reassert that we matter to the indifferent universe of organizations.
We need an inconvenience fee that we as customers, agents, buyers, clients, patients and purchasers can assess on those whose services we’ve procured. Imagine giving the cable guy a two hundred dollar service charge for wait time, when seven and a half hours have been spent in mock house arrest? Or getting to charge a fee to the dealership for making you wait four hours for a 30 minute oil change when you scheduled the appointment for oh…four hours ago?
For all these places, time is money, and we need to assert the same reality, we’ll surrender our time for money, or you will lose money if you make us surrender our time excessively. Bring back the 30 minutes or it’s free for everything but pizza! Or maybe, we make the inconvenience fee like the billable minute…so that the meter is running once the twenty minute grace period passes.
There will be gamers, like the doctor’s office that invites you back into a room to wait to be seen, and leaves you there indefinitely. You don’t want to leave, but you spend all the time until you’re seen, waiting in that small room, stuck until the right person comes through the door. If you make a fuss, there’s an unwritten understanding, you may lose your room or the person you want to see may delay their coming.
Here, tips for service and negative fees for delays beyond what is reasonable, seems reasonable. Alternatively, a 20% tipping to the customer for unanticipated wait time.
If all of these proposals feel messy and cumbersome, you’re right, but as is, we’re faced with an indifferent reality of large organizations that neither notice our comings and goings, nor care in particular about things that inconvenience us. It’s time to strike back. Don’t act so surprised. This isn’t any mercy mission. I’m part of the rebel alliance and a traitor!
Now as a person who struggles with strict punctuality, I get the downside of such a proposal, but honestly, I’d be willing to go broke to not have myself placed on a fifteen minute phone tree before being shunted to an answering service that can’t answer every time I call an office anywhere about anything.
It’s like someone modeled all customer service correspondence after the Department of Motor Vehicle’s expediency and the charm of the IRS. This is 2021, the age of twitter, instagram, tiktok and God knows what else, but it’s all short and efficient. Why are all our businesses rolling out the latest Model T’s to compete with the horse and buggy? If this isn’t purgatory here, it’s a reminder that hell is infinitely worse. Think of spending eternity on hold and never getting the appointment.
My two cents–and they’re free and you don’t even have to dial an extension to get them.
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