CAUGHT IN THE NET...
INTERNET technology is great until it goes wrong. I have just wasted an hour attempting to log on to a government department that prefers online contact rather than telephonic.
Like supermarkets, I was placed in a queue and watched a jaunty little chap walk along a line across my computer screen towards the promised land of connection.
The one positive was that he marched without Vivaldi playing on a loop in the background.
Only one minute waiting time, was the message, then: “You are now being redirected to the website.”
Unfortunately, my chap must have detoured into a quarry because every time he reached the end I got a blank screen instead of admittance to the inner sanctum.
I began to feel sorry for him as he kept getting cast into oblivion. Where’s the job satisfaction in that?
The website carried dire warnings about actually trying to speak to someone on the phone because of Covid shortages and social spacing.
Silly me for even considering it, although I imagined lines would be manned by civil servants sitting at their kitchen tables in their pyjamas enjoying working from home.
Perhaps the login system was having a blip, or I was having a blip, or I was being bounced into nothingness by soulless algorithms who were having a blip.
Or perhaps the algorithms were having an extended coffee break after their success in screwing up school examination results.
Whatever the reason, I got nowhere and made a strategic withdrawal with the intention of trying later in the dead of night to catch the algorithms off guard. In the meantime I lost an hour I could have spent writing this column.