40 Minutes Here, 40 Minutes There 

     Yesterday I found that my internet connection was down and at the same time my landline went wonky. Wonky is a technical term I’ll not take the time to explain. The internet being down was not a big problem as I didn’t really need it right then, and the landline was no great loss. However, since I was paying for these services, I thought I should alert someone to the malfunction. 
     The worst part of this dilemma was having to call the service provider to report the loss of service. Hardly had their robot answered the phone, and before we could commence with my identifying myself, it had to explain to me what Century Link is doing to protect their employees and customers from COVID-19. I didn’t need to hear about that, nor about the new products they thought I need to make my life complete. 
     Several times I had to tell them that I was not interested in taking their survey when we got done. The idea that they thought we would actually get done was heartening, but I had my doubts. 
     Once we got through with all that the robot passed me off to another robot which felt compelled to repeat a good part of what the first robot had told me. Maybe it didn’t trust the first robot to do an adequate job of it. Then it went on to tell me that it was going to pass me over to the next customer service specialist, but that the wait would be one to three hours. [What? Is India running out of people?] The robot did offer to call me back as soon as my number came up. 
     The next morning, eight hours later, and not having heard from them I called again, went through the same robotic ritual, and finally got to talk to a person. 
     After that it was only a couple hours until a service person came, fiddled with something on the outside of the house and we had phone service. In the meantime, my internet was back. 
     Now all my efforts only took forty minutes of my time but at my age I don’t know how many more forty-minute segments I have left. If the phone and internet people think that because I have to stay at home I need entertaining I appreciate the thought, but their efforts are not needed and are actually resented.