Puzzling Procrastrination ©

I had been putting off making a number of phone calls for a few weeks, and I was a little puzzled at my behaviour because I’m not usually a procrastinator.

After making just one call (and waiting for more than a week for the return call that never came), I decided to get all of my telephone calls over and done with in one day, and complete all of those outstanding tasks. It was by about the eighth phone call that I came to understand why I had been so reluctant to make the calls in the first place:

• The annoying recorded voices that take forever to get through;
• Punching in all of the required details as requested by the irksomely chirpy      recorded voice, only to find that when I finally got to talk to a real human being, none of the information I had provided had even been passed on;
• Being put on hold because every place I phoned seemed to “have a higher than normal volume of callers, but still appreciated my business.”
• Getting through and either being disconnected or being put back on hold with one of those irritating recorded messages, obviously because they appreciated my business so much;
• Having to start the whole process over again.

It’s time like this that one should have a punching bag installed next to the phone or a blonde muscled masseuse on hand ready to mssage my tense neck and trained to say “Don’t vorry my liebschön, those schtinkers deserve a horse-vipping! Ja! Now have some chocolate und relax.”

On the positive side - at least my phone calls reached people in Australia.

I recall a conversation (if you could call it that) with a phone service provider where I literally had to spell every third or fourth word I spoke so that they could understand my Aussie accent. I discovered rather quickly that they couldn’t read English either. ©