When we moved into a plantation house two Saturdays ago, we were delighted by its Old World elegance but not quite so thrilled by what seems to be LIME’s modern programme to keep Barbadians aware of their past: their past without a telephone or the Internet.
The phone simply refused to work on principle, like Alexandra School teachers – though in the teachers’ case, they might have refused on principal.
My wife, Jah bless her, hung up her (obviously mobile) telephone, smiling. A technician would arrive “within 12 hours”.
“Isn’t LIME wonderful?” she asked. “Seven a.m. Sunday morning and they’re going to get our phone sorted before 7 p.m. Sunday night!”
I said nothing but the look I gave her must have spoken volumes.
“Oh,” she said, “ye of little faith!”
But it was more like me of much experience. Sunday night turned into Monday morning and the phone remained more silent than Prime Minister Freundel Stuart on a matter of national importance. My wife, a trifle less happily, redialled what LIME calls, apparently without irony, its “help” line.
Our job would be done “within 12 hours”, promised the new person, reading off the same old card.
“Before 8:30 p.m. tonight,” said my wife, daring me to contradict her belief in LIME. I said nothing, and expected the same.
The next morning my wife, a sorely disappointed woman, discovered that although her request had been made Sunday morning, it had not been “logged”.
She hung up, assuring me that now the job had been logged, a technician would arrive “within 12 hours”, or before 7 p.m. At 7:35 p.m. she rang the obviously satirically named “help” line again only to be told that “within 12 hours” really meant “within 12 working hours”. I did not point out that “within 12 working hours” itself really meant “within 12 logged working hours”.
Wednesday morning, my very upset wife attempted to threaten a customer disservice representative with, “If you do not send a technician today, I am going to go straight to TeleDirect!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her the customer frustration agent was probably thinking, “Good! We don’t want customers like you! Go give TeleDirect trouble!”
And I can see the agent/assassin’s point: imagine someone being so unreasonably demanding as to expect phone service from a phone company!
You pay a man on a bike $2 and get a sno-cone but he obviously is not a multibillion-dollar international communications giant, which you pay to get stuffed.
Wednesday afternoon, 80 hours after her first cheery call to the no-firetrucking-help line, a technician arrived. He was affable, professional, dedicated and spent so much time in our house we began to think we should give him his own room.
But the chief personnel officer was more likely to coax an offer of “separation” out of Jeff Broomes than our technician was to coax a dial tone out of thin LIME air.
Apparently of its own volition, the phone began working on Thursday night, more than 100 real hours (but only 24 logged working hours) after her first call. My wife was pleased.
But wait until she gets the bill and sees LIME has charged us for fixing its own line.
