They'll Call It Progress and Charge You Extra for the Privilege

The phone company reshuffled the deck. You're holding the joker.

I read in the paper about folks out west having a fuss with the phone company over new plans. Getting shuffled around like cards in a magic trick, and some of them don't like it one bit. Hell, if I still had to explain to the phone company what a phone was once a week, I'd be testy myself. These new plans read about as clear as a yard sale with no price tags. You ever open a bill and genuinely wonder if you're being charged for telephone service or some kind of secret society membership? That's not a billing cycle. That's a crapshoot with a postage stamp on it.

Here's the plain truth: these customers could have saved themselves a world of grief by holding onto their old plans with both hands. You don't let some corporation wipe its feet on you and call it an upgrade. There's noise about technical errors too, and I know a thing or two about the kind of gremlins that can sneak into a system. Back when the Harrow Corners phone lines started ringing out at midnight, singing hymns to nobody in particular, we didn't file a complaint with the county. We fixed it ourselves, with salt and stubbornness, same as everything else. I wonder sometimes if these tech fellows have ever tried either.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm bitter because they don't make phones with dials anymore. You're about half right. I do miss the sound of a dial spinning, the way it told you someone was taking the time to think of you, number by number. But what really grits my teeth is the notion that a company can just change the rules underneath people's feet and expect everyone to nod along like they've been asked to pass the butter. Where's the accountability in that. Where's the plain human decency.

There are people in this situation who had the right plan and just the wrong timing. Reminds me of Mrs. Higginbotham, over by the old oak. She's been waiting on the lake to give up the Hendersons' boy since the day it took him, and I can tell you she has learned a patience most people will never earn. You cannot force the lake to do a single thing it hasn't already decided to do. You cannot force a corporation to honor what it implied it would. But that doesn't mean you sit quiet. It means you call them on it, loud and specific, and you keep your paperwork.

I've lived long enough to see things in this town that the rest of the world would call impossible. To us it's just another Tuesday. Take the year the county fair ran nine days longer than it was scheduled and nobody could leave. We didn't rage about it. We dug in, ate the funnel cake, and waited for it to end on its own terms, because we knew it would. These folks tangling with the phone company are in something similar. They can kick and holler, or they can take a page from Mrs. Higginbotham and outlast the thing with their dignity intact. Both options are on the table. Only one of them leaves you with any energy afterward.

But waiting is not the same as doing nothing. You pick up the phone, or the salt, or whatever the situation calls for, and you handle your end. You read your bill line by line. You know your rights before you need them, not after. You don't get to be righteously furious at a company for doing exactly what you didn't notice them doing. That's not injustice. That's inattention, and there's no sympathy in it.

Don't let anyone treat you like a number on a spreadsheet when you are in fact the person paying the spreadsheet's salary. Stand your ground. Know what you signed. Read what they send you, even the parts written in that font so small it's practically a threat.

Life is not a picnic, and neither is dealing with a company that's bigger than most small countries and answers to nobody you've ever met. But if you won't count your own beans, don't complain when someone else counts them wrong on purpose.

Keep your receipts and your wits about you. , Aunt Dot
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