Nathan texted me last night at 10:37. He said, “Mom, I need the biggest favor from you ever ever ever.” “Hmmm,” I thought, “I sense he needs money or an excuse to get out of school early.”
Note to Self: Send Quinn the “It’s your turn to be the good-cop parent!”memo.
I replied to Nathan with my eye-rolling and sigh-laden, “What?!?!?” I tried to avoid the whole text message back-and-forth by doing something novel; I actually called Nathan. When he didn’t pick up, I hung up and within seconds received a “Hold on a sec” text message.
It was late at night and my gut told me that I would be cancelling my lunch plans for Tuesday. Nathan texted me with, “Alright, so my laptop sh*t the bed which had my Bio essay on it. The laptop I borrowed from Matt doesn’t have Word, which I just found out, so I need to get out of school tomorrow ASAP to finish it at home.” We were playing Nathanopoly; Nathan had just thrown his Get Out of School Early and I Need Your Laptop for the Day cards onto the playing board.
I sensed that perhaps Nathan might belong in jail due to his “I forgot to do an assignment, so now I’m knee deep in it” card. Wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, I asked him if he had told his teacher about the mishap; he said he did and that she had given him until today to pass in the assignment. Uncharacteristically, Nathan said, “I’ll do anything. I’m desperate,” and then I wondered how many dog walks equaled “desperate.”
I told him that I’d fetch him at 9:15, and then I cancelled my lunch plans. I figured that while Nathan was madly working on his Biology paper on Evolution (and I really wanted to read what Nathan had to say about that), I would spend a most likely frustrating morning on the phone with Dell technical support, trying to get his laptop fixed. It turned out to be a somewhat frustrating hour.
I know we all have our technical support horror stories. When my laptop had issues last month, I was quite happy with the Dell technical support provided. It was quite another experience today.
I wondered with today’s technology why I had to give the same information to three different representatives. Shouldn’t my name, address, and the service tag of the laptop be in some database that each representative could access? We can’t seem to survive without it, but sometimes the “knowledge” seems to be missing from “technology.”
Numerous times I was put on hold, which was understandable given that the representative had to troubleshoot or fill out online forms to make sure someone arrived at my house with a new LCD for Nathan’s laptop. After coming back onto the call, the representative would say, “Hello? Are you there?” I’d say, “Yes. I am.” Then he’d say, “Hello? Hello?”
This happened about five times during the course of our conversation. I was beginning to feel like an Apollo 13 astronaut. I had lost contact with NASA, and I wondered I’d ever find my way back to the representative, who could provide the on-site tech bearing the LCD needed to propel Nathan back into his laptop space and out out my laptop’s orbit.
I got a confirmation email for the on-site tech while on hold, so I knew the system, whatever it happened to be, was working. The representative then asked if there was anything he could do, and I felt like asking, “Can you rub my feet for me now?” Behaving myself, I said, “No,” and then he asked if his manager could speak to me, and I said that was fine.
Again, I was put on hold. I started to get anxious, but before I could shoot off “Hello?” after “Hello?” I heard a voice say, “Hi.” He verbally summarized my whole hour on the phone, and I acknowledge his summary stating the representative had done a good job; he had despite the technical difficulties.
He asked if there was anything else he could do for me and, again, I resisted the foot rub comment; I said there wasn’t. He said, “Thank you, Sir.” I laughed to myself and thanked him.
As Nathan worked on his essay, I periodically check in on him. When he wasn’t on Facebook or IM, I did see a Word file that looked like it contained many paragraphs. When I went to leave his room the last time I check on him, he asked, “Mom, do you know where I can get some Hungarian forints*?” See, I knew all along it was just about money! ♥
* He’s going to Europe for seven days at the end of the month.
Anyway, I thought tonight that I might lose my laptop shortly after Nathan arrived home from soccer practice. But, while he was gone I pulled out my 2005 HP laptop, fired it up, and it worked. I put Nathan's documents on it, and he's been working on it since he came home.
I thought I might have to have a short blog tonight, but it turns out, it isn't, is it? Iz wanted to make a movie today, so, I thought, "Great. A short movie for a short blog." Anyway, now this is a long blog with an associated short movie. ♥
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