Settling into a new home requires a bunch of changes, doesn’t it? New arrangements of artwork on the walls, different color schemes to match new room arrangements, switching to different utility companies, doing the Change of Address form for the post office, etc. One of my least favorite among these is hiring a new lawn care crew.
So… to help me out, my lovely real estate agent had given me
a list of four potential companies she had heard about here in Alvin. And the fun began this morning when I picked
one at random and looked it up on Google.
All I had was a name and a phone number, and I was hoping for, you know,
some basic information like location, reviews, maybe a photo or two, etc. AI jumped right in, of course. Heavens to Mergatroyd. In a matter of moments AI was as lost as I was.
This particular company didn’t exist in southeast Texas. No website, no handy google map, no Reddit or Quora reviews, not even a Facebook page. Just my luck. I expanded my search to include the entire U.S.A. and got a smattering of companies with the same name – in Idaho, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Really? Who knew Rhode Island was big enough to have lawns?
But I digress. I ended
up just calling the number. A woman
answered with “Hello?” I said “Hello, is
this a business?” She said, “I’m at
Kroger can I call you back in five minutes?”
I hung up without a word. Half an
hour later my phone rang, no caller ID so I ignored it as I always do for
unidentified numbers. Doesn’t everybody?
I moved along to the next one on my list. No answer.
No “leave a message at the beep” recording. The third one was similar to the first, except
it was a man and he was apparently outside an airplane hangar or maybe attending
a rock festival in Rhode Island. Not a
business answer, just another Hello.
I never made it to the last one on the list. I had to go take a little break that sort of
morphed into a little nap. For the rest
of the day I wondered if I’m really that out of touch with the 21st
century. Is it really true that service businesses
just don’t need to identify even their name to customers any more? And is it really true that I might be ready
for the Old Folks Home? Then I wouldn’t
care how they answered their phones, would I?
