By Paul Psoinos
Most frustrating day in recent memory. Got up intending to work on Sanskrit translation for tomorrow's class. First had to print out a five-page PDF of the assignment, Hymn of Creation from the Rig Veda. Printer told me it was out of ink. Always tells me it's out of ink. Never has been yet. I told it to go ahead and print. It printed out five pages that were very nearly blank--showing just the very faintest ghost images that looked like the revealed script at the bottom of a micrographic Chinese palimpsest. Decided I must in fact be finally out of ink.
He tells me he's not stupid; I agree and propose that perhaps I am, since I can't make myself understood in standard English. I get a little exasperated and raise my voice a bit, start hunting for the security page at B of A online, where I just saw what I wanted a minute ago, before calling this character, and would have signed up for it except that it said it required a "mobile device" to do so, which I neither have nor want.
As I start looking for the security page and can't find it, I remark aloud that I just saw the damned thing and now can't find it, calmly and quietly voicing my aggravation at this continuing series of frustrations. The guy hangs up on me.
I call back, go through the same series of robot menus and recordings, then get a human. I explain what I want; she knows right away what I'm talking about, but instead of telling me where to find it, she transfers me--after a further delay and recorded assurance that my call is important, &c.--to a customer-service human, who begins interrogating me all over again with queries about my identity, account number, address, mother's maiden name, city and state where I opened the account--an entirely new question, never asked hitherto in the past thirty years of business with these people. Very security-conscious, these folks.
After I pass the oral exam, he tells me where to find what I want online. I explain that I can't use that, because it requires a mobile device, which I don't have (or want); I just need to use my desktop. Can't I just use my desktop? Isn't there a similar security feature that allows me to get a secure code number for a one-time online transaction so that the Pirates of the
No, he explains; the SafePass Security System requires a mobile device because . . . I tune out the completely irrelevant explanation; then, when it's finished, I ask again whether anything that fulfills the same supposed need as the SafePass Security System is available for use without a mobile device.
Eventually I learn that unfortunately, no, there is no similar feature for transactions not using a mobile device. Why this omission by people so security-obsessed I neither know nor inquire. I decide to risk losing all and use my real B of A check-card ID number.
By now I've used up at least an hour. Maybe ninety minutes.
I go back to the Dell Web site and put in the information to make the purchase, then discover that it's going to be a week before I get my ink, or at least three or four days if I pay an extra five bucks for expedited shipping. I Google Office Max and look for their store locator; it tells me the nearest place is something like six miles from here, two towns over.
I know that this is nonsense; there's a store a mile from here I've been going to for years. After several failed repetitions of the search, I try Office Depot instead. There it is. Office Max and Office Depot recently merged, and apparently my local store got renamed. That's why I couldn't find it on the Office Max store locator. Or maybe I just forgot the name.
I call the store. Indeed, contrary to the information--no: propaganda--propagated by the Dell Web site, Dell ink can be bought elsewhere than online from Dell. Yes, it's right there, in stock. I drive over, buy a cartridge, and then return home.
First I call Dell Customer Service to cancel my order. After a series of robot menus and assurances that my call is important them but they're experiencing a high volume of calls, eventually I get some guy in South Asia who claims to be named Tom or Dick or Harry and asks for my name, my order number, and the reason for my call, then asks why I want to cancel the order, then says he'll connect me with a Customer Service Representative. After more recorded assurances, &c., eventually I get some other guy in South Asia who claims to be named Tom or Dick or Harry and asks for my name, my order number, and the reason for my call--at which point I inquire why I'm having to answer precisely the same series of questions twice in a row, after having just answered them for the other Tom or Dick or Harry.
Tom or Dick or Harry tells me he's just a Customer Service Receptionist and must ask me these questions in order to determine which Customer Service Representative can best assist me. I remark that the other Tom or Dick or Harry was also a Customer Service Receptionist who asked me the same questions for the same reason but in the end transferred me only to this Tom or Dick or Harry, who merely duplicates the other Tom or Dick or Harry's effort, cresting a veritable Everest of inefficiency. Tom, Dick, or Harry begins reading me some pro-forma scripted apology and wholly irrelevant nonsense explanation, which I tune out. Eventually I am indeed transferred to yet another Tom, Dick, Harry, who asks me precisely the same series of questions and finally agrees to cancel my order. (As to that, we shall see.)
Elapsed time now approaching three hours since first attempting to print out my document.
I install the ink cartridge and begin printing out my five pages. After an unusually long delay, a window opens on my screen to tell me the printer is busy, which it is not. I shut it off and cancel the print job, then turn it on and start over. After another unusually long delay, a window opens on the screen to tell me that there's no ink cartridge in the printer, though I know that there is, having just installed it.
I open the printer and jiggle the cartridge around, shut the printer, and try printing the document again. This time--after another unusually long delay--the window gives me some other reason (or maybe repeats one of the same reasons; my eyes are fogging with rage) why the printer isn't going to obey me; I click the button that says "Continue," and after another unusually long delay the printer begins to work. Very slowly. Unusually slowly.
Finally my five pages are finished printing. I take them from the printer and discover . . . five pages that are very nearly blank--showing just the very faintest ghost images that look like the revealed script at the bottom of a micrographic Chinese palimpsest.
Cursing with all the lung capacity that I can summon, I decide to copy the document onto a floppy disk and carry it to the store around the corner to use their machinery to print it out. Soon a window opens to inform me that the document is too large for this storage device and requests that I try a larger one. I insert a blank CD in the appropriate drive (E) and attempt to copy the document onto it. A window opens telling me to insert a blank disc into Drive E. I curse mightily once again, remove the blank disc, insert a different blank disc, receive the same imperative. Giving up--and deferring for my leisure any question why my CD drive does not recognize my blank CD's--I copy the document onto a memory stick (Drive G), carry it around the corner to the copy shop, approach the counter, find myself ignored for a time and then passed over in favor of another customer, who has arrived later than I did, and at last am directed to a computer that I may rent for this operation at a cost of $5.00 per hour (minimum charge: $1.25) and $0.25 per black-and-white sheet (or $0.65 per color sheet).
The computer to which I have been directed does not accommodate memory sticks; it has no USB port. Returning to the counter, I am directed to a different machine. Returning to the row of machines, I insert the memory stick into the USB port of the machine to which I have been directed and begin trying to print my five-page document. After a moment, something called Zone Alert opens a window to warn me that I do not have access to this zone--whatever that is.
Returning once again to the counter, I am told something I cannot understand by a woman nearly whispering in incomprehensibly accented English. In response to my asking what she has just said, she abruptly leaves the counter and sends someone else to assist me. This next person tells me to talk to the young man working on the computer, then abruptly walks away. I turn to the bank of computers and see there three young men working on computers, none of them appearing any more or less likely to be the designated assistant than the others.
Eventually I determine which of the three young men it was to whom I was being directed for assistance, and he begins attempting to assist me. He starts trying to print out my five-page document. The window warning of the Zone Alert does not appear. Something approaching five minutes pass while I await the printing of the document. The young man explains why this is taking so long. Eventually he sends the document instead to a different printer, the color one, promising unprompted that I will be charged only $0.25 per sheet for this, not $0.65, since the color printer is faster than the black-and-white, which is still not responding.
The color printer delivers my five pages. I carry these to the counter and am told that the total charge will be some $4.00. I want to know why, since according to the young man's assurance and my own arithmetic I should be charged something more like $2.50. The price is adjusted accordingly.
On a hunch, I try printing a one-page Word document, an old one, not the five-page document I've been driven sputtering mad trying to get printed all day. It prints out immediately. On another hunch, I reinstall the old, purportedly empty ink cartridge, and try printing out the same one-page Word document. A window appears on my screen telling me that the printer is busy, which it is not; I cancel the job, shut off the printer, turn on the printer, start over. A window appears telling me that the old purportedly empty cartridge is out of ink. I click "Continue." The document prints out, clear, bold, black, immediately.
Progress.
