RIVER CITY JOURNAL: FLASH: THE PHONE COMPANY CAN'T CALL YOU BACK ANYMORE

This is the truth. You can call them, but they can't call you back. Is this what competition has done to Mr. Bell's mother, Ma?

We all have gripes. Some of us have certain things that turn us into whiners. Here are a couple that have reared their ugly heads in my life this past week. Perhaps you've had similar experiences. Feel free to share them with me. As you will see by the time you've finished reading this, belly-aching has its own power to soothe.

Let's start with the phone company. Once upon a time, there was only one phone company, and it had big, broad shoulders. You could say just about anything you wanted about the phone company, and it would be true.

In the golden days of telephones, that big phone company came to your house and gave you a black phone that got your attention with a ringing bell. Somewhere along the line, the phone company decided to allow customers to choose from a selection of phone styles -- and different colors, for heaven's sake. Some of these newfangled pastel phones didn't even have bells. They had whistles and sirens and all sorts of stuff.

One thing you could say about the old phone company: It was reliable. And it rarely made a mistake on your bill.

Nowadays we have competition, which has produced so many wonderful advancements in the world of communications.

Like voice mail.

Yes, I know we have voice mail here at the newspaper. I know a lot of you don't like it. I find the ability to leave messages on voice mail or someone's personal answering machine to be a plus. The person I called knows I called and knows to call me back.

What I don't like are the complicated systems that ask me to keep making choices and punching an endless series of numbers without ever getting to talk to a human being. If you make a mistake, you have to start all over again. I make lots of mistakes.

Take the phone company's system, for example.

I had some charges on my latest bill that I didn't think belonged there. So I called the number on the phone bill that you are supposed to call if you have a billing problem. I considered this a billing problem.

After going through all the automated hoops, I was amazed to find myself speaking to an actual person. In today's world of computerized phones, this is the equivalent of finding a hundred-dollar bill when all you were looking for was the dime that fell out of the hole in your pants pocket.

The nice woman at the phone company apologized and said the phone company's computer was down, even though the phone company's computer and I had struck up quite an acquaintance before the nice woman came on the line. She said she could not access my account information. She asked if I could call back in the afternoon.

I'm no electronics whiz, but if the phone company's computer is down in the morning, I don't have a lot of confidence it is going to be up when afternoon rolls around.

So I suggested that the nice woman should call me back when the computer was in good working order.

"I can't," the nice woman said. "We only have incoming lines here, and I can't make any outgoing calls."

I let that soak in for a minute, because I really wasn't ready to accept what I had just heard.

"Ma'am," I said in as calm a voice as I could muster, "you're the phone company, for Pete's sake. And you can't call me back?"

She apologized again, but she stuck to her guns.

To test the phone company, I called as early in the afternoon as possible: precisely at 12:01 p.m. I wanted to see if "afternoon" was a magic moment for the phone company's computer.

It was. The nice woman was still there. I guess she had been sitting in her cubicle all morning watching the clock and waiting for me to call back.

She took care of the problem and removed the questionable charges from my bill. I was happy approximately four hours later than I had planned.

My other beef this week has nothing to do with telephones or computers. It has to do with the gremlins who live inside machines like automobiles.

My old brown car, which I affectionately call My Old Brown Car, has developed a quirk of late. From time to time the electrically controlled power window on the driver's side refuses to let the window go down. To find out if the window has stopped working, all I have to do is drive up to a drive-in window -- at the bank, fast-food restaurant or cleaners.

For no reason at all, the window mysteriously starts working again.

It's about the only thing wrong with My Old Brown Car that I haven't been able to fix with duct tape.

That's my gripe: Why haven't they invented duct tape for power windows? If they can send John Glenn up in a shuttle, they ought to have duct tape for power windows. There's something for Bill Gates to work on, seeing as how he's so darned interested in windows.

By the way, younger son the pilot drives a prototype turboprop airplane that will soon go into production for the military. It cost millions of dollars. He tells me he never takes off unless there's a roll of duct tape in the cockpit. It's a good feeling to know you have raised your sons well.

And one last word about duct tape, even though this isn't a gripe. See? That's how soothing getting something off your chest can be.

I was looking at a catalog with a lot of stuff I'll never buy. Pictured was a sweatshirt with the following imprint:

"When the going gets tough, the tough get duct tape."

Amen.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.