My troubles all started when I disconnected my cable in the basement. I only watch television downstairs while I am on my exercise bike, but when the plot gets exciting, I forget to pedal and by the time the show is over, I’ve only “traveled” about 28 feet, which isn’t even a first down. It was time to get rid of the distraction.
When the cable company got my receiver box and remote control back in the mail, they thought I wanted to discontinue my entire service package, and the next day, all my televisions displayed a black screen with the message: “CUSTOMER DISABLED,” which is a very unfortunate way to phrase my predicament.
I called the cable service and they informed me that to fix this problem they needed to know all the numbers on the backs of all the cable boxes on all five TVs. I have a great photo of my wife scrunched behind our big-screen TV, nudged in between a giant fern and a china cabinet, trying to read the tiny numbers and talk on her cell phone at the same time.
We were told by the customer service rep that our TVs had been misconfigured. Go figure. The soonest they could come out to fix the issue was five days. No cable television for five days was a very scary thing. Mary Ellen and I love each other; we just weren’t sure how we’d fill all that time.
While we were on the phone discussing the current outage, I asked if she could make any suggestions for the future to help me reduce my cable bill. She provided some options. This is NOT what she really said, but this is how it sounded to me:
“So, if you switch to Direct TV, it will lower your bill, but that’s only a promotional rate for a year…or you can just stream your shows, but then you can’t use your DVR. You could get Apple TV, but you have to buy boxes for all the TVs, unless you buy all new TVs that are smart…or subscribe to HULU, or you could get a dish, assuming you can get service there. Oh, you could also watch TV over the Internet, but you need to download the service for that, so you may not get any local stations or you may need an antenna. We have a website where you can diagnose your specific problem and then find a solution all by yourself, which we here at AT&T think is also the future of medicine.”
I was frazzled when I hung up, so I decided to go grab a cup of coffee at a local shop. While I was in that area, I thought I’d also pick up my prescription next door. I maneuvered up to the drive-thru window where a woman appeared.
“I’m here to pick up my cholesterol medication, Lipitor 20 mg.”
“I’m so sorry, Sir, we don’t sell Lipitor. This is Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“Okay, then, I’ll take six crème-filled. “
I ate them all in the car. I wasn’t worried, I’m on Lipitor.
