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Limon, Colorado 10:30 AM, June 28, 2006
As I've mentioned, I just got my first cell phone, for this trip. Barbara and I were long-time holdouts, but when I read that Highway 50, which I was planning to take through Nevada and Utah, was known as "the loneliest road in America", my best judgment was to finally take mom's advice and get one of those gadgets, for emergencies.
Of course, the phone quickly became more than that. I discovered it to be essential for "bringing my loved one along", as well as for staying in vital touch on the road with friends I was visiting, directions to whose homes I invariably misinterpreted the first time. Ironically, as I remarked on the Nevada page, much of Highway 50 has no service!
I used my first 180 minutes on my Tracfone — the cheapest, simplest package, according to a friend of ours, — by the time I reached eastern Colorado. Barbara and I had planned to discuss a monthly phone plan on my return to California, and for now supplement my minutes by buying a phone card. They hang on a rack, sorted by company, at all the highway convenience stores, so I found out the other day. Half an hour ago I purchased a green, 250-minute Tracfone card which, all bought and paid for, turned out to be nothing except a cashier's receipt with a pin number and the 800 number of the company on it.
the innocent-looking culprit
Thereupon began the terrible ordeal of getting my phone updated with the new minutes. I quickly failed at the automated instructions and pushed the "O" key.
In a few minutes, I was connected with a female service rep. Trying to place her accent as she very politely read me a script that was liberally — no, radically —sprinkled with the phrase, "thank you, sir", I tentatively conjectured that she was talking from somewhere in Asia.
Even this saintly little woman's — I use the word "little" because her voice sounded diminutive — plentiful waterings of gratitude for every instruction I successfully followed were not able to prevent me from flying into a rage several times, as our interaction proceeded. The difficulties were due to her job, not to any personal deficiency of hers, I explained to her once. Had Mother Theresa been on the other end, I was sure I would have been yelling at her, too.
For starters, her instructions for digitally finding my serial number didn't work. Then, when she asked me to take the battery out of the phone and read the serial number on the inside of the plastic case, the phone, case cover and battery all flew separately onto the floor. Picking them all up, I couldn't get the battery back in. I started to rant, but quickly regained composure.
"Thank you, sir," she said, and we got back into our flow. I noticed after awhile that her confidence seemed to peak every time she had to read me a long string of numbers, or read back one I had read her.
I got angry again when the very long code she asked me to key in, in order to get my pin number—which itself had been a slightly shorter long code—accepted, began instead to call that code as a phone number. It did this the first two times we tried it. On the third go-round, she tweaked something at her end. I prayed, as I pushed the buttons. This time the screen said Code Accepted.
Happiness flooded my being. All was forgiven. Her name was Maricel, she told me when I inquired. She was in Miami, not Bangalore or Taiwan.
She tried to get me to take a survey or something, but I interrupted. Or should I say, someone inside me leaped in and interrupted, saying "You did a great job! I'm tired! I want to stop!"
"Thank you, sir," she said, hanging up.
The ordeal is over. I'm ready to use my phone.
But there has to be a better way to do all this!
