The Bird of Time
Today I was planning to finish and post a long essay that was about half done. Really, I was.
What happened? I decided to call my cell phone company and ask a few questions about changing my service and perhaps getting a new phone. After all, they keep sending me emails saying “Get a new phone – for free!”
That call consumed about two hours. Now I feel quite wrung out, and quite happy to keep my old plan, which was grandfathered in from about the time of the Renaissance. I did learn a lot more than I knew before about current cell phone twistings and turnings, which have become far more Byzantine than when I last checked.
I’m writing about this because modern life seems increasingly filled with these contradictions. Save money! Get your new whatever! And hours and hours later you’re more confused than ever, after having researched and researched and researched. That appears to go for most purchases.
When I went to California for my eye surgery and got my flight reservations, the website kept breaking down right at the end of the transaction. Then, when I tried to call on the phone, they said there was a two-hour wait. But hey, you can do it by text! So I tried that, and it involved a two-and-a-half hour wait.
Convenience has somehow led to inconvenience for so many things.
Remember one-a-day vitamins? They used to be these tiny little pills that contained just the RDA for the basic vitamins, and I took them for years and years and years. Perhaps I don’t need them – I do eat my fruits and veggies and all that stuff – but I figure I’ll just continue. But over the years, vitamins have grown huge both physically and in terms of what they contain, horse pills with mega-this and mega-that and somewhat-mega-prices as well. Try finding a regular old vitamin these days.
I used to get mine at Walgreen’s and about a year ago they stopped making them. They came in a smallish bottle with a year’s supply, 365 petite easy-to-swallow pills for something like $8.99. Recently I spent about six hours online, spread over several days, looking for a substitute. Every search I could think of led me to only one rather expensive selection that wasn’t quite what I wanted, plus a ream of the expensive aforementioned mega-pills.
I gave up and ordered some gummy vitamins, which were more basic in their ingredients although not the least bit cheap. But when I received them and chewed the first one, I almost spit it out. Awful! Apparently even sugar can’t disguise the bitterness of vitamins.
And then, for no apparent reason, the next time I went on Amazon, the algorithm – which had stubbornly defied me previously in my quest – gave me a suggestion for exactly (or nearly exactly) what I’d been looking for in vain all that time. I bought a bottle. The pills look like my old buddies from Walgreen’s, and have a similar formula. They’re a bit more expensive, but what isn’t?
Go figure. At least I have them now.
Oh, and the title of this post? It’s from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
I love the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Haven’t thought about it in eons, and lo! This week I’ve come across about ten references to it.
I’ve got three editions, each with beautiful illustrations. One is illustrated by Arthur Szyk, another by Edmund Dulac, and the third with random Persian miniatures. All three gorgeous.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion in these corporations yields mediocrity.
The customer is always right… no longer. The customer is there to be tricked, duped, and taken advantage of in any way possible that enhances their bottom line.
You are on interminable hold listening to, “your call is very important to us blah, blah”.
Probably just me, the crotchety old man.
Lots of people make the familiar quip “What do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.” I like lawyers. They really don’t want to take a lot of your time. I think it should be changed to “What do you call a bunch of marketing consultants at the bottom of the sea?”
Yes, we beat polio and smallpox but the modern curses on mankind are phone menu systems, mentally-retarded AI response functions, and an insistence that you should answer the robot before being connected to the foreign call center, where ‘English as a second language’ is spoken, where ‘second’ is often glue-factory ‘last’. And listen, corporate America: If your AI Robot tells me that ‘due to unusually high call volumes’ etc. etc., then maybe, just maybe, if that condition has existed for 5 solid years, you should hire more people.
The only solid strategy I’ve found, if connected to the foreign call center, is to get away from them as quickly as possible if it’s not something dead simple. The chances are, they don’t comprehend your problem – they’ve been taught a series of rote responses to trot out. After a few minutes, a supervisor will be listening in. Demand escalation, keep telling them you don’t understand what they’re saying, then start demanding they transfer you to a call center in the USA. This often works, and usually the problem is quickly cleared up once you start speaking with an Americano. I know that’s hopelessly chauvinistic, but it’s true, dammit.
Lee Also–
If you like anecdotes about the Rubaiyat as well as the poem itself, you might enjoy this short video about the expensively bound (leather, gold leaf, ivory, precious stones, the works!) version of the 1859 FitzGerald translation of the poem that went down with RMS Titanic in April 1912:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZU4stZmWjE&ab_channel=ShipGeek%3AExploringMaritimeDisasters%26Triumphs
Here is an online text account of the lost treasure:
https://www.regencyantiquebooks.com/19th-century/omar-khayyam-rubaiyat-titanic/
Aggie:
Actually, “If your AI Robot tells me that ‘due to unusually high call volumes’ etc. etc.,” I’ve discovered that if you don’t hang up, it’s often answered by a real live person within a minute or two. Apparently they just sometimes give that automatic “high call volume” message in order to induce you to hang up.
neo on July 7, 2022 at 8:31 pm
That’s not been my experience at all. I’ve gotten hard disconnects over and over. With the IRS I even started trying the options where “I agree I owe the IRS money and I need to set up a plan” even though I was trying to get a refund; figuring that a real person might be assigned to take in money. But, no. It’s just a game to make you go away, with no persons attached, and nearly everyone is doing it.
I think it may be connected to our screwed up employment situation. I just heard that the new idea is to try to hire 16 to 18 year olds in states that allow it.
With cell providers and cable TV providers my experience is you always have more success if you go into the store. It’s a lot harder to give you the run around when you are standing right there. But you have to stay committed to just leaving with nothing if you can’t get what you want.
Neo: I always wait; after all I’m making the call to resolve an issue. Some of the potentially-better companies will give you an estimate for the wait time, and offer a call-back feature. I’m grateful for these options. But really, for most of them, it’s a hostage-taking situation. There’s unpleasant music and interminable advertisements that you can’t mute, for fear of missing the representative when they eventually answer. You’re stuck, and they know exactly what to do with your time as a captive audience.
The online ‘Chat’ features are only marginally better. Same foreign-call desk issues, except now they are juggling a handful of different clients at once, so you answer, wait, get a reply, answer, wait….. And as I said, as second-language English speakers of dubious competence, they often don’t comprehend very well. One ends up dumbing-down the responses in hopes of at least establishing some kind of successful communication. I tried to stop a subscription this week, and it took 3 attempts at Chat before giving up and calling, then the call took about 50 minutes to successfully conclude. The definition of ‘frustrating’.
Save money!
Well, maybe. My rule of thumb is that if a company offers something unasked, they stand to make money on it. My only role is to supply the money.
Aggie–
Do any of the companies that bug you blame their long wait times on a staffing shortage due to COVID? I’ve heard that excuse several times over the past few months. Next thing you know, they’ll blame the call center snafus on climate change.
PA+Cat: No, I haven’t come across that explanation yet, with a call or chat center. I have in person though, in many commercial establishments.
I share your frustration with the high dose vitamins. I am looking for supplements, not 500% of the RDA ! Last year I bought low dose Flintstone vitamins for kids. Flash forward to this year and it seems many of the Flintstone vitamins are higher dose now than last year. And I avoid gummies because I have a crown and I hate the feeling of something like gummies getting stuck on my teeth .
I try not to ingest anything Made in China, so I bought the name brand instead of the house brand vitamins. Low dose, high price.
Bird of time?
Violence in Japan.
Former Japanese PM Abe shot and shows no signs of life…
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/former-japanese-pm-shinzo-abe-shot-chest-rushed-hospital
Once a year every CEO should be forced to attempt to phone in as a customer and navigate the company’s Byzantine customer “support” system.
Don’t even get me started on passwords and password managers. I spend hours trying to get into sites that, as you note, don’t work once I’m in.
My iPhone 7 is now about 6 years old. The faceplate is cracked and mostly held in place by a sheet of clear plastic tape. Several pieces of the phone have broken off over the years.
I recently spent 10 days in the hospital. My phone was quite the talk of the town with the nurses. They couldn’t believe I used a phone that was “so old”. They even liked to show the phone to other nurses and nursing assistants on the floor.
Recently my place of work has been pushing various apps to MY phone that they insist that I download. But these eat up memory that is already used by apps that I have PURCHASED for PERSONAL use on MY phone.
So I broke down and decided I needed to update my phone, and with more memory. Because some of the apps I use are made for the apple IOS I wanted to stay with an iPhone. So I spent many hours researching and, finally ready to spend a friggin $1000+ on a phone, I contacted my cell service provider. But wait! The phone will be free! Free! Aw what the hell, go for the iPhone 13 — it’s free!
Except, no, not really. If you sign up with a new plan, one that costs even more than your current plan, my cell phone provider will give me $25 towards the purchase of a new phone.
So, screw it. I’ll hold onto my old phone. After all it is a conversation piece. And my grand-nieces-and-nephews get to snicker at their old uncle with his ancient phone.
“And then, for no apparent reason, the next time I went on Amazon, the algorithm – which had stubbornly defied me previously in my quest …”
i usually get better results searching Amazon using DuckDuckGo or Google(last resort) than Amazon’s internal search engine.
Something that I keep running into is staffing shortages. I asked the representative I got at American Airlines why it took them 2 1/2 hours to answer my call, and that was their response, and that was their answer. I am pretty sure I got the same answer from some other company too.
We are in a weird place with employment right now. In much of Red America, there seems to be a large mismatch between the supply and demand for employees. Maybe the same in Blue America, but I don’t go there. Everyone has Help Wanted signs out. I was at Home Depot in Missoula, and there were big signs out advertising starting pay for various positions. In this small town, it is hard to find dinner Sat night, because no one has cooks. On and on. To no one’s surprise, I am seeing a lot of trading up with the workers in town.
One thought – we haven’t had any real inflation until now, under FJB. It’s been 40 years. Workers are, no doubt, seeing prices jumping as consumers. So, are maybe more diligent about switching jobs to make more money. But a lot of employers don’t have big raises built into their budgets. They need to raise their prices to cover their increased costs, but haven’t faced this problem for so long, that they don’t remember how to compete in this sort of market. I wouldn’t want to work in one of American Airline’s call centers, and the company has never shown itself to be nimble, so I am not really surprised that they can’t fill their open positions. Ditto for their canceled flights, etc.
I can sympathize Neo. This year, soon, I will turn 65. Various people, including my sister-in-law that is a senior HR executive at a large company, tell me that I need to sign up for Medicare. I checked with my large company benefits organization and they referred me to an outside firm who agreed to a call to discuss. That person says I have to sign up and explained the different plans (Part A, Part B, Part D, Supplemental plans, and so on) I asked what is to be done about my current healthcare benefits provided by my employer. Oh, apparently it is up to me whether I continue on that plan or switch to Medicare. So I tried to get some insight as to the things I should consider when making that decision. The person really, really didn’t want to participate in the decision process so she sent me no less than six .pdf documents that would help me. Well, I’ve been reading those and they are more confusing, not less, and never distinguish between what I must do and may do. Did a quick perusal of the Government web site and it also is vague about what to do. So I’m going to call them and see if I can work through this. I’ve got hours of research and conversations in already, expecting several more to go.
I worked for united healths pharmaceutical manager for a time, and it took a month long course to familiarize oneself with all the inns and outs, and I had to work with Citrix and Oracle, the scylla and charybdis of software, which needless to say are not user friendly,
iowaan:
I had used regular search engines, too.
Steph:
Your phone sounds a lot like mine. I think it’s more like 4 or 5 years old, but it had an accident (that is, I dropped it, hard) several years ago and is cracked and also flickers at the bottom. But it works just fine, and I’m used to it, although people tease me about it.
Steve Walsh, take a look at Medicare Advantage plans in your area. We have Humana and like it. No co pay for your primary and $35 for specialist. Pharmacy has not charge for our generic RX (mailorder). Eyes covered with co pay $35. Dental only in their network.
these data templates along with numerical data, don’t work very well together,
SHIREHOME; Steve Walsh:
Medicare Advantage plans are, as far as I know, plans with a limited choice as far as doctors go. Some people have no problem with that. I’ve long had a problem with it because on occasion I’ve had something rare (such as my recent eye problem) that meant travel for care. I have Medicare and also a supplemental plan as well as a separate Part D, and although the baseline payments for the insurance are somewhat more that way compared with an Advantage plan, it gives me the feeling of not being hemmed in. So far (knock wood) coverage has been excellent.
We’re very happy with the Medicare Advantage plan in our rural area. The local hospital and its clinic and a clinic and hospital in a neighboring larger town.
They have all the basics of specialist covered.
The plan we chose has no premiums, but the co-pays are slightly higher ($35 for a specialist or primary care).
While traveling to the largest city in the area is out of network, the plan will pay for any specialist if there isn’t a doctor in the plan.
In December of 2020 my wife had a heart attack. The local hospital was going to send her to the larger hospital in the plan, but they were full, so she was sent to the regional hospital known for their heart specialists. Completely covered.
I had knee replacement surgery last month, done by the local orthopedic surgeon in the plan as outpatient surgery at the local hospital, and my recovery has been better than the first knee replacement in 2014 done in Seattle by the leading sports orthopedic surgeon.
I am potentially looking at an eye procedure which none of the local doctors do, but that will be covered, since there isn’t anyone in the plan to do the surgery.
Most drugs are covered, optometrist is covered, and even enough dental to go a cleaning.
We don’t go to the doctor much so it works very well for us.
Brian E:
I have higher premiums but no co-pay. I went to California for my surgery to a person I consider the most highly qualified. An Advantage plan would almost certainly have made me go locally, because there are plenty of cataract surgeons in my area.
I’m glad you and your wife seem to be doing well now.
“I’m writing about this because modern life seems increasingly filled with these contradictions. Save money! Get your new whatever! And hours and hours later you’re more confused than ever, after having researched and researched and researched. That appears to go for most purchases.” neo
Upon what basis would one imagine that “the confusion” is anything but intentional? Nowadays, rarely does someone who has something to sell welcome a prospective buyer doing research to enable an informed decision. That IMO is especially so with subscription based cell phone services.
IMO, reviews by consumers are the best defense. Its a major plus of buying through amazon. Of course, if one does not want to support Bezos’ politics, one can use amazon’s comment section to get a basic take on the product and then look elsewhere to buy it… act in accordance with the ethics demonstrated by the other party is a solid rule to live by.
I own five books by Omar Khayyám. My copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald and illustrated by René Bull.
The poem ‘Wild nights – Wild nights!’ by Emily Dickinson helped to win the hand of my most cherished lover.
.
TMI
According to my agent, the biggest difference between Medicare Advantage Plans (these are called Medicare supplemental ‘C’ plans) and other Supplemental Plans (‘D’ and ‘G’ for example) is that, with ‘C’ you are dealing with an insurance company. They administer the plan, they collect the co-pays, they offer options and incentives like Silver Sneaker programs, and they may or may not impose caps. The other plans are administered by Medicare, through the insurance companies, and are controlled by regulation instead of by the insurers. I prefer to deal with Medicare at the moment – I’ve had my fill of insurance companies. So I take Medicare A & B, and pay for a ‘D’ and ‘G’ plan.
Thanks, Neo.
My knee is recovering nicely, and my wife is taking steps to protect her heart– regular walks and a diet, losing 40 lbs.
Thank you for the advice and counsel. I was not looking for that, was really commiserating with Neo’s experience, but it is really helpful. It doesn’t need to, nor should it, be this complex.
Thanks.
I look at a number of vendors for the same product, because we’ve been told amazon always isn’t entirely honest in the reviews
mega-sized daily vitamins. Thanks for the tip to search again on Amazon for a replacement for the One-A Day multiple vitamins. Yes. my wife and I, like you, could find only “horse pill” sized vitamins on the shelves of the drug stores and supermarket stores. Both of us had to float the pills down with lots of water to swallow.
We were happy to find the good old red pills and bought a two pack of 365 for less than $25. good find and thanks.
I’ve been using Centrum Silver ever since I hit 50, and yes, they are not small. But they are supposed to be aimed at the vitamin/mineral needs of the older set, like us.
And, on my doctor’s advice, I’ve supplemented them by taking Vitamin D, C, B-complex, and Zinc additionally. These apparently boost immune systems considerably. The Zinc is also a horse pill. The others are all ok.
}}} I look at a number of vendors for the same product, because we’ve been told amazon always isn’t entirely honest in the reviews
I have no specific case with re: OTC pharma, but I left a mildly less than spectacular review of a “fitness watch” on Amazon, and the watch seller reached out to me offering me as much as 50 bucks to retract it. So, it might be so, though I suspect it’s smaller companies doing that kind of stuff.
No idea what percentage of people are honest enough to refuse to do so.
Mind you, it was not a really negative review — 3 out of 5, and listed what I thought were shortcomings, more to guide feature improvements than anything, as well as to make purchasers aware of its limitations. I indicated it was a decent watch.
Also, for pill taking, YMMV, but a technique i have used for decades is to take a mouthful of water, tilt my head back, drop the pills in, wait for a moment for them to drift towards the back, then swallow. This puts them towards the back of the throat with a clear path and lots of “follow fluid” if you gave them time to drift back.
I developed this technique to deal with pills that taste horrible no matter how fast you swallowed, but it works for larger pills, too.
Again, YMMV, and you have to be able to hold the water in place, but it works if you can do it. I’ve never had an issue but no idea about other people.