One of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is understanding. For me as a counselor, behaviorist, and human being, understanding encompasses all of my professional and secular life. WHY WHAT WE DO – Trying to care and understand each other is very difficult but very necessary – Someone who listened to you and really cared about your feelings Are you? How did that make you feel?
On the afternoon of Thursday, July 28th, I was working on my Eagle column at 5:00 pm because of the editor’s convenience when suddenly drat lost AT&T service and was unable to deliver it to the editor. She called Stacey and she said don’t worry. She would pick and post my previous column.
The main reason I’ve used AT&T service over the years was because I was familiar with troubleshooting their systems (I was there often). So, a deep breath called Tech Assistance. I’ve lived in Oxford since 1988, and all that time I’ve had stressful and infuriating phone calls, but many years ago I learned that no matter what happens, I’ll show my faith, be patient, be polite, ( I decided to show respect (even to robots). .
When the robot (now a female voice… kinda cocky) finally connected me to a “real representative” (patience), spoke my standard lines (and meaning) to “Andre”. ‘Steve, you have no idea how much that means to me…’ Then ‘Kamil’ was great (5 points on her survey) I had a battery of tests done – After an hour the modem was suspected and sent a new one overnight.
I got home after mass on Friday at noon, just in time to pick up my new modem from the delivery service. Many times in the past, I moved his 7 wires on the back of the old modem to the new one, turned it on, and hoped this fixed the problem. Same he had 4 green lights but he had 7 instead of 2 red broadband he had dancing with lights.
So more tech calls, past the aforementioned robots, long waits, patience, phone calls answered at 6pm on Friday night by ‘Jen’ from the Philippines, and another hour of testing. It was done, but it was a lot of fun talking to her and we had a good laugh, but she said my house needed a technician because the signal wasn’t working. I was frustrated without my computer until the weekend, but it felt good and I got a lot done!
I have nothing to do on Saturdays other than working in the yard for hours (no favorite car shows or PGA golf). I called my longtime friend and columnist Bonnie Brown, wanting to know which of my columns Stacey chose, and he emailed it to me (Vietnam) and posted it on Facebook. From my cell phone – Thank you Stacey and Bonnie!
At noon on Saturday, sweating, the phone rang in my garden, and AT&T’s “Daisy” unexpectedly called me. She was very knowledgeable (supervisor?) and let me run a test on a modem I had never done before! But after an hour – “Stephen, the problem is in your wiring I was sending a signal to the modem, but it didn’t come through.” Thanks for trying, Daisy! ”
So I knew the technician was going to be here on Monday, so I went to work chopping, chopping, trimming the shrub that grew in front of the AT&T service box, and spent hours trying to fix it, but… It didn’t work.
I got home from mass at 12:10 on Monday and the technician didn’t show up until 4:00 pm. But she rushed off and she never entered my house. Twice trimming over a year ago, it worked and another technician praised me, but her boss said she would never allow it and fixed it properly.
She eventually pinpointed the problem to the cable across the street from which the couple had just moved. The new person moved in quickly, had another cable company install the line, cut my cable due to poor preparation, and by 7pm she had sniffed it out and fixed it! During this 3 hours of her, I was impressed with her 9 years of knowledge and her work ethic. I know your name, but I respect your wishes and will not share it here. Thanks to AT&T representatives. Thank you very much. I did my job well. Life problems fixed. God, understanding this frustrating situation, gave me a swell and uplifting experience. Amen?
Steve lives in Oxford, worked on campus, and completed his PhD. Counseling from Ole Miss, LPC, NCC, contact is: sstricke@olemiss.edu.
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