Vodafone makes the Mounties look like slackers

If you've been wondering where I've been, and why this blog hasn't been updated in the past three years, I've been hiding from Vodafone.

I don't know when I first made it to their Most Wanted list.  I have had two pay-as-you-go mobile phone accounts with them for years now (although the first one lapsed, and will probably now go straight to Hell as a result).  They always respect the "Do Not Contact Me With Offers If You Want to Live" box when I tick it.  But, apparently, not any more.

The first call came when Herself and I were in a state over the dog.  He had some issues that required the services of a burly man and a heavy pliers.  As a result, any phone calls received unexpectedly in the middle of the day could mean the dog had lost a limb, or put a man's eye out, or even eaten an Alsatian whole.  Well, he is a Jack Russell terrier, after all.

Then the new-phone debacle coincided.  This was the changeover from our much beloved small outdated brick phones to a pair of super slippery newfangled types that require the dexterity of a ninja on cocaine to operate.  My pocket began making strange susurrating noises that I finally figured out was a ring tone.  By the time the bar of soap I'd been told was a phone was in my hand and the right way up the caller had given up.  I recognised a Vodafone Customer Care number in the missed calls register.

The next call came during a meeting at work.  I hammered the device off a colleague until both fell silent.  But it's no use.  The damnable thing continues to haunt me.  And always at the most inopportune time.

This evening while gaining the moral higher ground of dragging an unclaimed change ticket out of the ticket machine on the bus, Vodafone rang again.  I tore the change ticket in halves in my red-mist rage and stood looking dumbly at the driver as he wondered why I was not pulling the now mangled journey ticket from the machine.  I grabbed the shreds and went back for the change ticket after all and sat down.  Vodafone again.

Because I'm not going to answer you at work, while berating a customer for being a customer, nor in the toilet, while chinning my phone out of my trouser pocket as my two hands wave under the drier, nor even when I am made to sit bolt upright in bed like a human right-angle, Vodafone, please stop ringing me.

It's your own time you're wasting.

Culture shock

The bus pulled in at the terminus at The Square and in keeping with tradition the passengers disembarked and the engine was switched off and somebody started to complain as the driver tried to go on his break.

"You're late!" the middle aged Dublin woman said to the African in the Dublin Bus uniform who was trying to wave her off the step so he could shut the door.

She stepped back down onto the pavement.

"I've been waiting here for hours and then you just go on a break!"

The driver calmly closed the door. He said:

"How many hours?"

There was a definite look of surprise on the woman's face. Not only was she, a native Irishwoman, being addressed by a black person, but also by a black person in a position of authority. It was evidently a shock to her system.

"How many hours have you been waiting?" he asked. "One hour? Two hours...?"

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Half an hour!" he said. The bus arrives every thirty minutes or so.

She retreated to the relative safety of the bus shelter. No-one else joined in the argument on her side.

"That's right," she rallied. "You go on your break now and get your cup of coffee or whatever it is you're getting."

The driver spoke quietly to her and I couldn't make out what he said. But her reply must have included something along the lines of

"And what are you going to do about it?" because he then said, loud enough for all to hear:

"I can refuse to take you on this bus. All of these people can travel. You cannot."

He turned and walked off in into the Square.

Ten minutes later we boarded the bus. The complaining passenger politely proffered her fare and was given a ticket. A few stops on, a friend joined her. They spoke cheerfully abut the weather and about hospital appointments and stuff like that. Then after a quarter hour their voices lowered and they whispered together. I wonder what the subject was.

Nice one, driver. I think.

Reggie Perrin where are you?

Can't really call the boss an idiot when you're self-employed without the doctor taking an interest in the conversation and writing worried notes on your chart. So after two and a half years as a wage slave, I've had a day of days when I should very much like to say something to the boss about his/her policies and the way they're mishandled, and (more to the point) how my colleagues... and worse... me!... get to be on the receiving end of bastard members of the public venting off about the boss's policies and how they're mishandled. It ain't fair. Sniff! Sniff!

Yes, I had a bad day today and if I had been on a public counter instead of a telephone, I would have cheerfully hospitalised the sarcastic little bollix that I had to deal with on a call this morning. But such is the pact I've made with the devil that I must stay in a completely unrewarding job, defending policies in which I don't believe.

No, I won't be sending back the pay cheques in protest. And that irritates me too.

On the positive side, the too-big-for-the-washing-machine duvet got a hand-washed pounding tonight. But I'm still mad as hell.

Welcome to the world, Willie. Personal loans to repay. Direct Debits to service each month.

I watched an episode of "The fall and rise of Reginald Perrin" a couple of weeks ago. I'd forgotten how completely anarchic it was. I also hadn't been inside that corporate world the character of Reggie Perrin inhabits when I watched it as a youngster the first time around and when he sporadically tells people they're bastards and gets away with it and fantasises about what bastards they are, it really strikes a chord. What fun.

And the funniest is that as the story progresses his honesty in calling all the twits out means that they begin to think he has some secret to middle-management that they don't, that he is really a guru whose ideas should be followed. Ultimately, he does the famous strip on the shingle beach and swims as far out to sea as possible, only to be washed up unknown in another part of the country where he begins to rebuild his life. Then he rises again, becoming the boss of his own business empire with all his former antagonists now working for him and which sells absolutely useless objects (for example the bottomless ashtray, or the rungless ladder) and which makes a fortune.

The program pokes fun at the whole British business world of the 1970s, the time in which it was made, and is full of lovely sterotypes: the fierce but dim managing director; the ditzy secretary; the ass-kissing middle-management staff. But the character of Reggie is just wonderful.

As soon as my debts are re-paid, I plan a less extreme Reginald Perrin exit from the job that I'm in now. I've had the arse chewed off me by one irate customer too many. The bosses can go fuck themselves and their policies. I want to be a customer again and be the one to do the biting.

On being.... vague

A customer gave me an unexpected pin-prick of memory this afternoon when he phoned me in the La-La-Land of the Local Government Department I work in to enquire about his service. He opened the conversation in the usual manner:

"Hello. My name is Such-and-Such and I live at Such-and-Such address. I received a letter from you that says I never returned my questionaire. I'm sorry, but I'm more than 70 years old now and I'm the first to admit I'm a little vague."

My mother used to use that term in the early stages of her downward slide.

"A little vague".

I think it must describe the feeling as well as the actuality of the mind becoming less reliable. How terrible it must be, to find at first that you have become unable to keep track of everything that used to line up nicely in your life; that things are starting to somehow become less real in your own head. And worse, to know on some level that something isn't right, but not being able to figure out exactly what.

This man had enough savvy left to figure out there was a problem, and to give it some kind of a name.

When you live with someone with Alzheimer's, there are so many affronts to logic and reality that you either find a way to cope with it on a minute by minute basis or you simply walk away. My method of coping with my mother was to stick another layer of mental armour on. I could feel each layer click smartly into place whenever a new stage of the dementia presented itself. You have to find a way to tough it out. It's a waiting game with only one sorry ending. A marathon.

My customer and I discussed his income limits for the service.

"I have a pension, though," he said.

I told him that on the application form it would be fine to send a photocopy of his pension book as proof of income and that the relevant departmental section would determine his eligibility for a reduced rate for the service based on this proof. He was fine with this and we chatted about his living alone and the lack of anyone else in the household who would potentially put him outside the income bracket for the service.

He apologised for not sending back the questionaire another time and I told him this was okay. He could re-apply for service on the form I'd send him.

I scribbled out his name and address on the envelope as we were speaking.

When I was done, I reiterated that all he needed to do was fill in the form and send proof of income.

"What income?" he asked, the sound of confusion evident in his voice.

"Well," I said. "A pension, for example."

"I have a pension," he said, as if it was for the first time. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm a bit vague sometimes."

When I'd gone around the houses again and we'd hung up, I tossed his application form into the Out Post basket with the others.

I've been unhappy this evening. There are still a few armoured places in me, far more ready to rise up than I had thought still possible.