Seán Moncrieff: A trivial customer service matter wakes my ancient, animalistic rage

I’ve done no research into this, but here it is anyway: we are rarely angry in the appropriate way. For instance: our planet is slowly incinerating beneath us, but this often gets the same emotional response as someone getting voted off Dancing with the Stars. That’s a shame. I liked their tango.

Instead, we worry about nonsense. I worry that the pen will become redundant. Most of my kids don’t seem to use them: they put notes on their phones or message people; in the process transforming the word “message” from a noun to a verb.

Such is the butterfly effect of globalisation. People start to get sick in China, and I'm reduced to using pencils

But I love a good pen. There is a sweet spot between the flow of the ink and the heft of the instrument that can make writing extremely pleasurable: even if, like my kids, I don’t actually write that much anymore. I use pens to scribble notes or underline things or occasionally sign documents I probably should have read first.

Nonetheless, I won’t give up this fetish. I have a few of them and try to be scrupulous about getting refills when they run out. But in the last year or so, that has become more difficult.

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Some months back, I needed a refill for my Cross pen: which I own partially because it’s a reasonably good pen, but also because they used to be manufactured in Ballinasloe, where I did a lot of my growing up. The abandoned factory is still there, still sporting the slogan: Cross. Since 1846. Every time I pass it, I make the same dad joke about how that’s a very long time to be cranky. The kids love that one.

Anyway, when I went to my usual pen refill shop they told me they didn’t have any, and probably wouldn’t until the summer. After a bit of googling, I learned that there is, bizarrely, a worldwide shortage of ink.

It's to do with global supply chain thingies, but mostly it's because of Covid: massive amounts of ethanol, which is one of the ingredients of ink, were diverted to produce hand sanitiser. Such is the butterfly effect of globalisation. People start to get sick in China, and I'm reduced to using pencils.

Start by messaging them on multiple social media platforms, find every email address in the company to send a complaint to and if that doesn't work, there's always anonymous poison pen letters. Except I don't have the ink

Perhaps this should have given me pause to reflect on the inter-connectedness of our planet and the lasting effect of the pandemic, but I wanted my refills. So, I went on to the Cross website and ordered some. They never arrived. I sent a couple of emails, and got the automated response that I would hear from a “knowledgeable customer relations agent” within 48 hours. But I never did.

I’ve decided that the silence comes from embarrassment, even despair: because the knowledgeable customer relations agents don’t have the knowledge. They have no idea when that precious ink might arrive.

I’ve also decided this for my own mental health: the delicious tug of becoming obsessional about a relatively trivial customer service matter is something that will never become redundant.

The world has been economically and medically convulsed, but I’ll go postal looking for my refills. I know what I’m like. I also know that many other people are like this too. The long queue, the impolite person in the bank, the “dial 2” to be told that your call is important to us: all of it seems to prompt something deep within us; an ancient, animalistic rage.

As if this kind of thing has been going on as long as there have been people; as if, back when we weren’t incinerating the planet, there were Stone Age office workers looking blankly at customers and saying: clay tablet says no. And it’s not everyone else she’s saying this to. Just you. Everyone else got a reply. They got their refills.

Right. Start by messaging them on multiple social media platforms, find every email address in the company to send a complaint to and if that doesn’t work, there’s always anonymous poison pen letters. Except I don’t have the ink.