The World Is Out Of Service

The World Is Out Of Service

By

Leonard Zwelling

You hate them in front of elevators. You hate them in front of escalators (especially in the DC Metro). You really hate them in front of airport bathrooms after a four-hour flight has just landed. What are they? Out of service signs.

But at least you understand these signs. Most of the time when service is out of order, you are not warned.

That was my day on Monday, August 12.

It started innocently enough. I wanted to get a CD copy of the myelogram I received at Houston Methodist Hospital the previous Thursday. After six hours of calling radiology and being sent to medical records which never picked up the phone, I had to get creative. I called the number that had called me to schedule the procedure. That number was no help, but they sent me to the file room. They were no help and sent me to a lawyer in medical records. The lawyer sent me to a clerical person in medical records who then told me that all I needed to do was to go to room 520 in Scurlock Tower, fill out a form, and a CD would be provided.

I jumped in the car and headed to the Texas Medical Center and Scurlock Tower room 520. Guess what? It worked. In ten minutes I had the CD that I had pursued for the previous six hours.

Now I had to send the CD to my son’s father-in-law, a world renown orthopedic back surgeon who wanted to give me his opinion.

I drove to FedEx.

At FedEx I asked to send the CD to Jacksonville and to include a pre-paid envelope in which my son’s father-in-law could send the disc back.

“The only way we can do that is if you have an account.”

“Great. Let’s open an account.”

The clerk types in my name and email only to find that I have an account with FedEx.

“What’s your account number?”

I had no idea. He said we need to call a number and get someone to tell it to me.

We called and she refused telling me that I have to go the web site to do this.

The clerk returns and talks to the person on the line who then puts me on hold, a place where I had spent a good part of my day already. She never came back.

“I’m going to UPS,” I said.

When I went to UPS, they were far less rigid in their requirements to enclose a pre-paid return envelope, except the UPS person (who couldn’t have graduated high school yet, if ever) was about to stuff the CD and a mailing label in one envelope.

I stopped him.

“Don’t you see what kind of envelope this is. It gets ripped open. It cannot be reused. Please include another envelope,” I said.

“We don’t usually do that.”

I had to beg. He finally acquiesced.

It didn’t matter whether it was the huge Houston Methodist Hospital, the FedEx store front, or the UPS store. I was met with incompetence, long waits, unreturned phone messages on answering machines, and impenetrable bureaucracy. In short, a lack of service.

And this was just one day.

I don’t think it’s me. Good service is at a premium these days. More and more machines are imposed on processes that used to be efficiently handled by humans. With the coming of AI, this will only get worse.

My advice is that if you need something done and you can’t do it yourself, set aside a day or two. It may well take that long.

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