Day: March 25, 2011

My landline phone has been out for a week and I’ve been snared in Verizon’s nightmarish phone tree system and unresponsive, evasive and indifferent bureaucracy. When I get caught in Customer Service, I always vow to keep my humanity, and it got rocky. I was considering tell one of the many people who put me on hold that I was terminally ill and needed a phone. That works I’m told but I felt too guilty about the people who are terminally ill. What if service to me left one of them stranded?

But I was angry and frustrated. I couldn’t reach any human on the phone most of the time, the online service they kept steering me too didn’t work, and I needed the phone for work.  Five days in a row I was promised a repair person and noone showed up any of those days. I went out to take photos and I saw a Verizon truck working on a roadside switching box. I pulled over. I told him my story. First, he gave me his cell number, which astonished me. He said he was an advocate for Verizon users, and he and a number of workers – he said the company was getting rid of their full-time staff in favor of part-time people who wouldn’t get benefits. He got into his truck and drove to the bottom of my road and told me to go home and wait for him to call. He had other techs he could call, he said.

He called 15 minutes later. A cable connecting my road to a switching box had shorted out. He fixed it. If I had any further troubles, call him at home, he said. Nobody could ever reach the company, and he couldn’t stand seeing customers get screwed. I drove down to find him and gave him a book and some notecards. I reminded myself that humanity is a powerful force, and there are always human beings who want to help each other. And I put his number in my cell. He is a guerrilla fighting for people in the Corporate Nation.

My phone worked. Two hours later, I got a tape recorded message at home from Verizon, saying their records showed my phone had been repaired, and “we are committed to providing you the very best service.” Thanks for helping remind me that humanity lives.

Working on Bedlam Farm Diary, Vol. 2, about the Rouse farm. Eight minutes long, which is too long.

In the Corporate Nation, our humanity is constantly tested and bested. We try to be human, dealing with vast greedy entities that are anything but, even if their recorded messages are telling again and again how much they appreciate our business and our call. As many readers of this blog know, I am definitely a happy user of new technology – computer, cell, blog, video, Ipad, Ipod. I love and appreciate all of them.

It does sadden me, though, that of all the companies I deal with, the only one that treats me like anything approximating a human being is Apple, and I appreciate it. They have my loyalty for life, at least until someone takes them over and fattens up the bottom line by making sure no customers or consumers are treated as humans. I hope Verizon never gets them. Maybe other companies will notice how much money they make.

I am old enough to remember AT&T before it was broken up. When you called to report a phone out of order, nice men in trucks appeared instantly and they fixed it.  Phones were important, and the people who worked for the phone companies seemed to know that. They seemed to actually care. Then the age of the megaconglomerate, the end of government regulation and adult supervision of corporations and the lessons of that don’t need to be told by me.

My house phone went out about a week ago. Every day since then, I have called Verizon (average wait time 30 to 45 minutes) and been assured that a repair person would be there that day.  Somebody would be in touch. Somebody would call. That was six or seven days ago, and I have never heard from anyone. Today I finally reached a representative after much navigating through phone trees urging me to go online (and be ignored there)  and told her that it seemed our daily communications were not working. She put me on hold. I have bad news for you, she said. No repair people were in the area.

Could I talk to a supervisor? Sure, she said, but it won’t do you any good. It didn’t. This afternoon, a repair truck pulled onto the farm and it seems the problem might be in some control box far away. We’ll see. Maria and I both have cells, and after this week, I think it might be time to jettison the land line. I gather that is what a lot of people are doing and what  Verizon would like. Cells are much cheaper for then to maintain.

I always thing these mishaps are a challenge to my humanity. I always take a deep breath, remember that there are human beings on the other end of the line who have little power or control. Sometimes you get lucky and find one who cares.  Technology distances us from one another. I rarely speak to anyone on the phone anymore, and perhaps there is a message in that. The modern American corporation work for stockholders, not customers, and that is something we all have to live with. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to ever be rude or hostile.

I am better equipped than some to deal with companies like this. I work at home, and don’t have to take mornings off from work waiting for somebody to call. But I do get angry when I think of the elderly, or people with two jobs, or something with a lot of other troubles trying to get only what they have paid for and are due. Technology is always a mixed bag, that is tragedy of it. It taketh and giveth away.

But it will not take away my humanity.

Maria has turned out an especially beautiful creation, I think, the “Reading Quilt,” inspired by our bookcase and woodstove. I love her sketches and the way she is integrating them into her work. Maria is showing her art next Friday evening at the Pember Library in Granville, N.Y., and then again, June 4-5, here at Bedlam Farm in the Pig Barn Gallery. I love her sketches, and I love this quilt, now up for sale.

Judy and Lyla.

If you believe everything you read and hear and see about family farms, they are doomed, unable to survive in the Corporate Nation, where profit and size seem to overwhelm every other ideology and impulse. To see what is about to be lost, just look at the photo of Judy Baldwin and her daughter Lyla, able to live their lives in the proud and individualistic nature of the family farm, a mainstay of American tradition, values and life.

I wouldn’t want Judy’s job, but she loves it, and her knowledge of cows, animal health, genetics and breeding and nutrition is amazing. Family farms are disappearing because they can’t compete in the Corporate Nation, which is relentlessly degrading service, work, the law, health care, security and quality of life. Corporations hide from us behind websites, corrupt the political system, treat human beings worse than most farmers treat their cows, compete unfairly with small businesses,  eviscerate loyalty and security and destroy the opportunity of the individual to life a free life of their choosing. We all seem to believe we need things that corporations sell  technology, medications and proceedures,  news, health care, notions of aging and retirement.

When I visit family farms to take photos, I think I am angrier than they are about what’s happening to them, as they tell me they can’t survive endless government and and animal rights regulations, rising costs, expensive technology, bizarre milk pricing practices,  competition with cheap immigrant labor and corporate farms that house hundreds of cows in warehouses day and night as milking machines.

Anyway, back to work on my Bedlam Farm Diary, Vol 2. One family farm. Hope to be done by Monday.