You tell me

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Background to this story - starting in 2014, but getting the significantly worse in January of 2018, my left hypoglossal nerve doesn’t work. That basically means the left half of my tongue doesn’t work.

Also, in the January of 2018 brain surgery, my left vocal cord and basically the left half of my throat, esophagus and all of that was paralyzed. What a way to wake up from surgery, eh?

Okay, now the story. I stopped at the local hardware store that was working on fixing the mower deck on my rather old lawn mower. It was supposed to be done in 2 weeks which was last Friday. Waited my turn at the service desk, asked them for an update. They looked it up, “We’ve been trying to call you since last Thursday. We’ve left four messages on your number.” "I don’t think so, I haven’t gotten any calls. Looked on their system, and they had my phone number as ending with 579 as the last three digits. I actually told them that the last three digits were 559. I know, I’ve had that phone number since, well I don’t think I have ever had a different mobile number.

So, you tell me. Did they make an honest mistake and type 579 when they were supposed to type 559?

Or did they not hear me clearly because of the throat/vocal cord issues?

I would love to believe it was the honest mistake but I think it was an honest mistake because the AVM has taken some of my ability to speak clearly from me. I used to love to talk on the phone. Now I avoid it as much as possible.

sigh

What do you think?

TJ

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TJ,

I think if you’ve got to your early 50s and only now people are starting to write your phone number down wrong, you’ve done pretty well. I have to spell my surname every single time and still people can’t write it down correctly, whether by phone or even face to face.

I do think telephony is getting worse. There was a time when telephone companies tried to improve the sound quality by digitising the signal. Now, the game appears to be to compress the sound into as few bytes of data as possible to maximise the revenue and reduce costs while remaining of just sufficient quality that only people with perfect hearing and beautifully clear diction can actually communicate.

Otherwise, you end up explaining everything more than once. I think you’re doing pretty good if you’ve only just found a problem! :wink:

Very best wishes,

Richard

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