You Rang!

We recently made a telephone call in response to an e-mail we had received. A company was interested in hiring us for an upcoming event. We were away when the e-mail arrived, so the call was made upon our return a few hours later. The young lady who answered had not expected to hear from us so soon. We know this to be fact because she said, “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
This led us to think about our “instant” society. Faxes, e-mails, voice-mails, cell phones, and text messages have all replaced the staid old postal letters, land lines, telephone receptionists, and telegraphs in the mindsets of today’s movers and shaker’s – even in the mindsets of today’s sedentary stationeries.
The unfortunate thing, despite all of these remarkable technological breakthroughs, is that our prompt return of a message is the exception rather than the rule. Whether it is the fast pace of most people’s lives and jobs or the “me first” mentality which is becoming increasingly more prevalent the further we venture into the 21st Century, we wouldn’t hazard to guess. Possibly it is a combination of the two.
Whatever the cause, we have noticed that not only are messages not returned promptly, but sometimes not at all. We have also noticed that “customer service” has morphed into an oxymoron. Also observed is that the majority of modern telephone answering / routing devices seem to be designed to keep the caller from being connected with the appropriate person or even machine. We don’t think that we are alone in these observations.
Now, we must close this month’s column and make amends to our editor. He e-mailed us 2 days ago asking where our copy was and, not having it complete, we found not answering such a convenient way to ignore him. After all, he probably thought it was lost in the ether world.
Note: We do our very best to keep this column fun and thought-provoking, sometimes at the same time. We would love to hear your comments on any of the Ink Blots columns. We are also interested in any ideas you might have for future commentaries. If something has come to your attention or tickled your fancy and you’d like us to delve into it, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment on our web site, www.mobilelifetoday.com.

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