The Anti-Communication Conspiracy

They were anguished, affronted, bored, impatient, frustrated and mad. These were the people who wrote to me after I wrote that I was the teensiest bit put out by the worldwide coup of the robots, usually accompanied by telephone music sounding as if it had been written in thin syrup and played by a world-class bore upon a dentist’s drill.

They are the readers who hate the push-button messages in which the electronic wizards have found a way for unfortunate prospective customers to spend an entire half day without having to hear the sound of a human voice. (And at the end of the half day, you have not had your question answered but you know the starting time of every movie ever likely to play the local theater. That happened to me the other day when I was calling to ask where the parking lot was at a theater in Hollywood. Needless to say, I did not find the information.)

I heard from Caroline Ahmanson, a lady of prestige, wit and intelligence. She told me that she and her secretary had spent hours trying to get a small scrap of information from a bank only to be told at the end of the exercise what her bank balance was and that she was eligible to draw for a chance on a weekend in San Francisco. And it had only taken an hour and a half.

Geney Harper, who lives in Westminster, went through a grueling experience and she is a woman of wide and profound knowledge of the computer and all its works and pomps, unlike your obedient servant who has barely mastered the on/off button.

Geney has taken 17 computer courses and is enrolled in three more for the fall semester. She wanted to buy some daisy wheel printers for her computer and called the local manufacturer of her particular monkey-on-the-back. Here is the conversation as she wrote it.

Question: What is it you want?

Answer: Twelve-pitch and 15-pitch daisy wheels for my printer.

Q: What kind of typewriter do you have?

A: An electronic Adler.

Q:: (By now, Geney had moved into a whole new dimension.) Oh, we can get you daisy wheels for your typewriter.

A: I don’t want new wheels for my typewriter. I want them for my printer.

Q: Why do you want wheels for your printer when you have an Adler typewriter?

Geney tried to explain that they were talking about apples and oranges and that the printer and the typewriter had nothing to do with each other. They were on different tables and plugged into outlets on different walls.

“A day or so later,” she wrote, “I marched to the business stationer we use and ordered the daisy wheels from their catalogue and they were delivered to our door free of delivery charge the next day.”

Geney concluded by saying, “I think we should not up with this put.”

Dorothy Dorr wrote me from Hollywood with a straightforward problem.

“I was trying to give something away.

“My favorite charity is a worldwide, well-known one that took care of us during the Depression.

“Thursday is my zone pick-up. I always call pick-up for the used clothing bags, they pick up and it’s all over. Well, here it comes. I said, ‘Pick-up, please,’ and heard, ‘One moment, please,’ and a recording came on.

“I heard that Our Savior would be watching, that I was a sinner, to repent, praise the Lord etc. After three minutes, I hung up.”

The next month, Dorothy tried once more and was told she wanted Dispatch. Dispatch told Dorothy to repent in the name of the Lord. She wanted to explain to the speaker that she was trying to perform a small act of charity, but she never reached a human. She gave up and called her church only to be told, “We don’t handle that sort of thing anymore. I suggest you try a refugee center.”

By this time, Dorothy had a severe stress headache and called her health-care supplier only to hear a recorded address in Spanish, a language of which she has no knowledge.

There were lots more men and women who wrote, pitifully recounting their problems with the devices. I have no solution.

I know they are time-saving but they are not infallible and when they get a pain in their sawdust, they just quit and don’t even try. They are very poor examples to folk such as I who just want to go out in the back yard and drink lemonade and let someone else cope. To those of you who wrote, just remember you are not alone. The rest of us are right here, shoulder to the wheel and thumb to the nose.