There was one actual human being who seemed sincerely determined to help me connect my laptop to my printer.
He was the manager at a nearby Staples.
I had reached the point where I had boxed up the Brother printer to return it. The Staple’s manager said there was no need to surrender quite yet. “We have a tech department.”
Wonderful.
He said they would call me.
They didn’t.
So I called Staples.
Surprise. Somebody in Quebec answered.
Apparently, various Staples services had been rerouted to people in Eastern Canada. They were perfectly pleasant, although my French wasn’t good enough to repair a printer, and their knowledge of my particular situation was fuzzy.
Eventually, the Edmonton manager called me. “As I said,” he said, “a few blocks from you we have a team of pros who can help you.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Is it free?”
This was apparently a ridiculous question.
There were various plans and prices, and if I understood correctly, somebody would come to my house and straighten everything out for something in the neighborhood of $260.
I began thinking fondly of the cardboard box.
Then I happened to mention something else. “When I call your number, I get people in Eastern Canada.”
There was a silence.
The manager was astonished. Apparently, he hadn’t known this. I heard him slap his head. Then he said something wonderful. He had been wondering why they weren’t getting any calls.
And suddenly I understood modern customer service.
The customers didn’t know how to reach the store. The store didn’t know where its calls were going.
The technical-support people weren’t part of the store.
And I was the one trying to explain the system to the manager.
chatGPT and I fixed the printer for nothing.
The problem?
We were printing to the wrong printer. chatGPT told me how to fix this in three seconds. Bingo! I saved about $260.
More importantly, somewhere in Edmonton, not far from our home, there is a Staples manager who knows where his telephone calls are going.
This may make me qualified for a management position.
