A New Circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno: Customer Service

When Dante wrote the Inferno in 1321, he identified 9 circles of Hell. I have no doubt if Dante lived today he would add a 10th circle: customer service. So I will add it in his honor.

The entrance to the 10th rung of Hell features a telephone. Pick it up and call a company in search of customer service. I usually get a robot voice that asks: “Thank you for calling. Please select the reason for your call from the following menu.” I explain, “I want to talk to a live person.” “I’m sorry,” says the robot-voice, “I do not understand. Let me repeat the menu.” Usually it takes 3 or 4 tries (by this time I am screaming in fury) until the cyber voice gives up and transfers me to a live representative.

This next stop of the 10th circle of Hell begins with following message: “This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance and training proposes.” This message is being phoned in from circle 8 of Dante’s Hell: fraud. Who really believes recorded calls and responses are being used to improve service?

After listening to this warning, the next message begins: “All of our agents are busy serving other customers. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line.”

This message is to test endurance. Is your problem bad enough to endure a 10 minute wait? A 20 minute wait? One time I endured a 30 minute wait because “our call volume is unusually high. Please excuse the delay.” When t customer rep finally answered, she had to endure my thoughtful, well-meaning evaluation of her company’s approach to customer service. (They won’t be using that phone call for training purposes.)

When I finally get a live person, I realize my trip is not over. The customer rep asks for proof of my problem. What is the order number? What is your pin? Was there a full moon when you placed the order? I am not very computer literate and when they tell me go to my computer graveyard to resurrect the paperwork, I know I am toast.

It is time Congress passed some meaningful legislation. We need a law that compels all companies to immediately provide live customer support if requested by a caller.

Until then, the warning Dante gave centuries ago remains valid for Circle 10 Customer Service: Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

A Grandma's Favorite Lullaby (100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall)

Welcoming Martha to Alderson Prison

We in West Virginia pride ourselves on being neighborly.

That’s why my friend Carol and I decided to take a cake to Martha Stewart, a recent arrival to our state. Martha is serving a 5-month sentence at the federal prison camp in Alderson for lying about a stock deal. I don’t condone Martha’s actions but at least she is doing time while her male counterparts in financial skullduggery are still free.

Charles Town is 231 miles from Alderson. Carol and I left early on a frigid Saturday because visitors are allowed at Alderson on the weekend. We knew we would never actually get to see Martha but that was not the point of our visit. We merely wanted to welcome Martha to the mountaineer state.

The chocolate cake we transported was homemade (would anyone dare bring Martha a store bought confection?). We declined a friend’s suggestion that we bake in a glue gun. Since this trip was all about Mountaineer hospitality we used a West Virginia family recipe. Margaret Ellen Vogler, Carol’s 82-year-old mother-in-law, gladly volunteered her recipe for Chocolate Cake with Boiled Caramel Icing. Mrs. Vogler, a native of Wheeling, West Virginia, perfected the recipe decades ago and it is the staple of all Vogler family reunions.

We arrived at Alderson, cake in hand, shortly before noon. The prison looks exactly like a college campus with one important difference: finding a parking space is really, really easy. We entered the Visitor’s Center, located in what looks like a former house. The place was packed. Inmates and their visitors shared sofas and benches, crowded around tables and spilled out into the yard. “Can I help you?” asked the guard. “We brought this cake for Martha Stewart”; we whispered realizing that most of the inmates and their families were probably getting sick of all the attention surrounding Martha.

The guard was friendly but firm. No food was allowed, she told us. We offered to leave the cake for the guards but that was not allowed either. She suggested we mail our hand made greeting card to Martha.

Carol and I were disappointed but still felt good about our neighborly mission. We took a few pictures in the parking lot and started to pull out. That’s when another prison guard, his jacket flapping, stopped us. He informed us that taking pictures at Alderson prison is a federal crime. Given the absence of any signs announcing this policy, we were caught by surprise.

We defended our actions the only way we knew how. “Can we offer you a piece of Chocolate Cake with Boiled Caramel Frosting from a recipe of an 82 year old grandmother in Wheeling?” In West Virginia, where there are still close family ties all over the state, there was a chance the guard had relatives in the Northern Panhandle and might forget the whole episode. This was not the case.

The guard demanded our driver licenses and destroyed the film from Carol’s camera. “Wait here”, he ordered and disappeared into the Visitors Center. “I can’t do time”, moaned Carol, an elementary school teacher. “I didn’t leave any lesson plans for next week.”

The guard returned our drivers licenses a few minutes later. He said he intended to report us to the Superintendent of Inmate Security but that we were free to go. We left Alderson with the cake and the threat of legal action over our head.

Martha Stewart will probably never know about our expedition to welcome her to West Virginia but that doesn’t matter. We wanted to show our sympathy for Martha and we did.

And that, as Martha would say, is a good thing.

The Herald-Mail, February 2005