©September 2002
Carol Jane Remsburg
Phone
Clarity Peeve
Okay, before I even begin, most
here know I work for a residential phone company so shoot me at random, that's
nothing new. However my gripe is of a different tenor.
Let me know if this strikes a cord with you, okay?
Back in the '30s & '40s having a phone was a big deal,
actually a sign of affluence. Still they were scratchy sounding and unreliable.
Every call was important and every call cost you something. So when the phone
rang, you rushed to answer it.
Then came the '50s and '60s, not much changed unless you
were upgraded and spent the $$ to get off the party line. Yes, there was a time
when two or three families shared the same line--it was cheaper.
By the mid-sixties, clarity and service were the watch
word. By then you could converse with someone on the other side of the world
and it sounded like they were in the same room with you. It was amazing.
The only thing more amazing was watching man walk on the
moon--any of us lucky enough to watch that live will never forget it.
Time marches on.
Through the '70s, '80s, and most of the '90s, people never
gave a second thought about their phones. They were there and served their
purpose, the clarity of the calls and the reliability of such weren't
questioned.
In the '70s came something new, something so bizarre that
only the elite had them. Celluar phones or radio phones. Their reception was
iffy and their clarity scratchy but it was the wonder of the age. At about
$5,000 to $8,000 a pop, they were wonders.
Come the latter part of the 20th century they'd grown
smaller, better, and much more affordable. Everyone had one. And while their
quality had grown by leaps and bounds, reception was still iffy and only if you
were on the 'right' network and clarity could be good or bad.
Now as we approach 2003 why is it that so many have phones
that don't work worth a damn?
As my work requires that I am connected to a phone all day,
deciphering where my customers are calling from is no challenge. A good
quarter, perhaps more, are calling from cell phones. The clarity isn't there,
it just isn't.
However the funniests calls are the ones who ring me up to
install a computer line for dialup but swear they won't use the phone for
regular calls . . . right up until they lose their signal. All this after
touting how wonderful life has been without a regular phone and how great their
cell phones are.
Hey, cell phones are a terrific invention. Over the next
ten years or so they will get much better, yet for clarity and reliability--get
a real phone and call from home. Don't waste your time and others if you have a
bogus phone or a bogus company servicing it--I don't care who the company is
(even mine--for flamers who might care to blast me).
Me, I find it nearly comical those that struggle and work
to say the same sentence about 4-5 times because I can't hear them enough to
spell "P-A-U-L", not to mention "Z-X-R-I-P-O-Y-R-S-T" or
did I get that wrong?
Damn!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
just wondered if anyone else noticed this conundrum?