A DAD'S LIFE:THEY HAVE me now, trying to show off to them with gadgets. I bought a new iPhone, even though it was more expensive than any of the other options, the contract was longer and the reviews said the other options were as good, if not better. I got it because the elder said the iPhone was cool. The struggle for kudos begins.
I don’t care about the little apple symbol. I don’t wet myself over sleek, brushed metal designs. I don’t plan trips to New York to hang out in the flagship store. But nor do I own a 12-year-old Nokia and bore everyone with how “It does everything I need it to do and why would you be wasting your money on anything else?”
I’d like to slap those people in the mouth even more than the techno-slaves. I don’t want to fight the geeks for the latest gear, but I want to understand what they’re on about. So far, that has meant trundling along, buying bits and pieces when the prices have tumbled from cutting edge rip-off to mainstream civility.
But over the past month, due to this single purchase, I have moved up in the pecking order of happening parents. Even the elder’s classmates have cooed over my new piece of kit. That makes me feel good. It feeds the needy dad. They’re never going to look at me and think anything other than ancient auld dad git, but I have a better phone now than the next ancient auld dad git. Small victories.
It got me in trouble too, damn phone. The service provider, to whom I signed up for a 24-month contract without any quibbles, didn’t bother to update my details, so when the next bill arrived I was still on the previous deal.
As I had had the phone a couple of weeks at that stage, and had taken to ringing old primary school acquaintances out of the blue to make the most out of my new “unlimited talktime”, that rang alarm bells. Under the terms of the old contract, most of those conversations would be over my limit and cost more than Christano Ronaldo per minute.
I rang the service provider to have the details adjusted. I didn’t want the children’s chances of a third-level education squandered on my yabbering to Michael from cub scouts in 1981. They could easily take my call when I wanted to buy something, but with a grievance, or a complaint, or even a query, I was fed into the customer service baboons. As far as I can tell, this company’s training for customer service reps boils down to asking for a date of birth and then arguing that the world is flat.
I’m not a patient man, and spending much of the past 10 years in the presence of children has not improved that. But I challenge the Dalai Lama to remain calm and negotiate the intricate layers of customer service in this particular system. Over the course of a week I spoke to five different operatives who each told me five different things, none of which was what I wanted to hear. Until finally, a chap back in the Upgrades Department chirped: “Oh look! Administration didn’t bother to upgrade you. I’m sorry. Our fault. I’ve done it now.” I wheedled an email out of him to confirm the same in writing and hung up.
What I’ve neglected to mention is what I said to the second-last customer service rep as my sanity stretched to snapping. I did what anyone who has written a column for more than 10 minutes knows you can never do. I threatened to write my next column about their ineptitude. I said the equivalent of: “Don’t you know who I am?” Of course she didn’t. Her tone became frostier. She asked once more what year I was born, laughed, insisted Columbus had sailed off the edge of the world and suggested I go ahead and do what I needed to do.
I have been on a semi-permanent cringe since that call. It has haunted my dreams. I have snapped at the kids, “Have you any idea what you’ve driven me to? All for the sake of having a phone that would make me, if only for seconds, relevant?”
I have been thinking of that customer service girl and how big a git she must think I am. In my longer fantasies, I have been wondering if she has thought there is no way he can work this into a parenting column. Wrong. Once you’re a parent, everything is relevant. The brats are responsible for it all.