VOICEMAIL, VOICEMAIL, WHERE ART THOU?

I moved from the south end of town to the north end, and ended up having to change my phone number. I was told that my voicemail would remain "intact", only that I would have to dial a new number to access it. All well and good. After spending a good part of the week moving, I finally got a chance to check my voicemail on Friday evening. I called the number that they had given me and received a message asking me for my security code, at the same time telling me that it would be found in my user's guide. Well that was very nice. Simple enough. All I had to do was look in my user's guide. Of course it would have helped if they had provided me one! (Actually one did come in the mail a couple of days later. Nice of them to leave that as a pleasant surprise for me.)

Well, you might guess that the phone company office is closed during weekends. So, on Monday morning (unaware that the user's guide was lurking in the day's mail) I called the phone company's office and a friendly, pleasant person answered the phone ready to help me solve my problem. (Now that I've gotten you this far, let me introduce you to a fine selection of bridges. Starting at only $2999....)

Actually, I got their "always delightful" menu system, which I worked playfully through until I finally got a voice saying, "If you have been locked out of your voicemail because some phone company representative with an onion for a brain forgot to tell you that your security code would be changing and that you need to know the new number to get in, then choose this selection." Well, perhaps that wasn't exactly what it said, but at any rate, after wending my way through 265 different choices in their menu system, and punching in my own phone number, some digits out of my Social Security number or my ZIP code or some other such identifier, I finally got a recording which delightfully told me that they were simply too busy to take my call that I should go sit in the corner and chew on a rotten apricot. (Or perhaps it was something more simple like, "Try your call at another time".)

One might think that, of all places one might try to call using the telephone, that one would have no trouble reaching the telephone company. One might have to think again.