The Stranger from Comcast
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By Angela Saylor
In our technological universe of big business and impersonal interactions, compounded by the pandemic, it’s easy to forget that we’re all people with feelings. Emotions are as much a part of our daily existence as they were in our great-grandparents’ times. But today, when corporations intimidate us, we often take out our frustration on workers with the hardest jobs.
One such technologically savvy conglomerate is Comcast. Which makes what happened during my recent interaction with them even more remarkable.
It all began on a Sunday afternoon at the end of February, when my writer-friend, George, alerted me by text that he was about to fax me an article he was writing and that he wanted me to critique. Who faxes these days, you might ask? George, that’s who. Like me, he’s in his seventies and struggling in the world of technology. I’ve sent him many faxes on my 3-in-1 Brother with no problem but I’ve never received one. When George tried to send me what he’d written, instead of the article going through, my voicemail answered which was probably because I use my regular land line phone number for faxes and pull out the phone cords when I send a fax. Talk about old fashioned, right? I still have a land line phone that I’ll keep until someone pronounces them dead.
George’s attempt to send that fax triggered a chain of events. First, I called my sister, a tech wizard, but she said she doesn’t fax. She just scans and sends. My next call was to Comcast where I was pushed through an ascending ladder of expertise. The first Comcast representative disabled my voicemail to see if a scan would go through and then we got disconnected. What else is new?
I immediately called Comcast back and after a while, got another agent named Liz. After listening to my dilemma, Liz wondered why the first agent had disabled my voicemail. Did I have any important messages on there? she asked. Oh, no! I panicked. The most important call of all from my husband, Jim, had been saved: his last call to me from the hospital before he passed away at the end of October 2020. I listen to that bittersweet message every couple of days.
I’d also saved three other sentimental messages from relatives. But the idea that I’d no longer be able to hear Jim’s beautiful voice terrified me. It had only been a couple of months since he died. I wasn’t ready to let him go. What to do? I burst out crying as I explained Jim’s special message to Liz from Comcast. And then guess what happened. Liz cried with me!
How emphatic of her! There has only been one time in my life when someone cried with me –and that was my mother. I was a teenager then, broken-hearted over a boyfriend whose name I can’t recall. The fact that Liz, a stranger, would intimately share in my grief made her inability to recover Jim’s message more bearable. She said a new voicemail had already been set up.
I politely ended the call and to keep from dwelling on my misery, I went through the automated steps of personalizing my new voicemail account. As I finished, a voice said, “You have four saved messages.” While I continued to listen, hoping beyond hope, Jim’s sweet message from the hospital greeted me. Hallelujah!
I immediately called Comcast. I had to thank Liz, who must’ve somehow performed a miracle. But how do you call Comcast and ask for Liz?
Ironically, a minute later, Liz called and told me that she had indeed recovered the messages. I couldn’t stop thanking her and sappy with relief, I blurted out that I loved her! Liz giggled and said, “Let me get off this phone before you start crying again.” But she was too late. I was bawling tears of joy.
When I told my writer-friend George about the Comcast experience, he could relate to my anxiety, having saved eyeglasses belonging to his mother, deceased for many years now. Liz restored our hope in this brave new world. She reminds us all that behind the desks, developing carpal tunnel from working on computers all day, are real people with the same feelings as us. That we can all make time to listen. That the thirst for harmony and understanding is universal. That if we dare to show our feelings in this sometimes-overwhelming world of big business and technology, remarkable things can happen.