MEMORY
Dec 31
I am excited. It is the dead of winter and my wife and I are booking a cruise for fourteen days to the warm sandy beaches of the Caribbean. Our travel agent did great securing a nice cabin with a great cruise line and even provided extra benefits with additional shipboard credit on the ship. With Covid almost running out of control we were not sure it would work but it is finally happening.
Now I just needed to contact the travel insurance agency to cover our trip in case something drastic came up to make us cancel.
I dialed the number, hit the wrong button, and got a very nice receptionist at a financial advisory company who kindly advised me I should be investing my money instead of squandering it away on a frivolous cruise. I, just as kindly, told her I am old and it is my money so I would squander it anyway I please. I think we parted friends, we were polite at any rate.
The number was dialed correctly on the second try and I began to get a little excited as the phone rang. A recorded voice answered and began what turned out to be a five-minute dissertation covering such interesting topics as their privacy policy, existing concerns over Covid, as well as concerns over travel in some parts of the world. We were just going to the Caribbean, we should be okay.
The nice recorded voice then asked me to pay close attention as their menu options had changed. I did. I listened as all seven options were covered to ensure I selected the most appropriate one. On the second lap, I selected option one which said, select option one to purchase a new policy. In hindsight, it seemed it should have been obvious on the first lap.
Another recorded voice, almost but not quite as nice as the previous one, informed me that my call was very important to them and please hold for the next available representative. It also said if I happened to be a computer genius I could finagle my way through their website thereby saving them the hassle of having to deal with me in person. Well, not that bluntly but in so many words. There was also the caution that, because of Covid and other factors, wait times could be longer than normal. I am retired, I am going to the Caribbean, I can wait.
The most irritating piano music began playing, I assume to either test my ability to withstand torture or perhaps to drive me to tackle using their website. Little did they know, I am stubborn, I can wait.
About every forty-five seconds the nice recorded voice would interrupt the musical torture to again advise me of how important my call was to them and if I insisted on being stubborn please continue to hold for the next (maybe the only) representative. I would then be returned to the "Insanity Concerto" on the piano.
After five minutes of the ever cycling music and reassurance of my importance to them I decided to open the online poker site where I played for play chips. This helped me tolerate the wait for a representative. I was soon into the poker and the thirty-minute wait seemed like only a week or two.
I eventually became aware of a voice of a living, breathing representative shouting, "hello?! Hello?! Anyone there?"
By that time, of course, I had gotten so absorbed in playing poker that when I did realize the voice was calling me I had completely forgotten why I placed the call to start with. I looked around frantically to find some notes to jar my memory and felt like the poster child for "the memory is the first thing to go!"
I finally found my paperwork and the nice representative helped me through getting the insurance. I thought again about just how much I needed this cruise, and after that phone call, I also needed a stiff drink.