3 HOURS DOWN THE DRAIN

Man… talk about 3 hours of my life I’ll totally never get back.  Plus… I’m so mentally whipped from it all, that it’s nuts. That’s the bad news. The good news is: my new cordless phone system is now in place. Holy ba holy is all I can say.

It all started about 6 months ago - maybe longer. The hand sets to my main cordless phone base all began to sort of have a life of it’s own. As in: in the middle of a conversation, boom. A crazy ass LOUD buzzing noise would occur, rendering the inability to continue conversing with whomever was on the line with me. For the other person, there was a dead silence yet for me I heard this loud noise. At first it was just momentarily but then, as time went by, it became longer and longer. Like maybe for 45 seconds, which in phone language is pretty long.

I lived with this bullshit for a long time but FINALLY I broke down the other night and logged onto Amazon to order a new Panasonic Cordless Phone System with five satellite hand sets. I may have even written about this maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when I had to replace the system the first time around. In any case…

I am NOT that person who, like so many, have ditched their land lines in favor of carrying their cell phones around the house 24/7. I find that a totally ridiculous option given I can almost promise you that 1.) the cell phone will be in another room completely and 2.) I’ll never know what hell room it would be in, anyway. Thus… racing all over the house is so not my cup of tea.

Enter: the 5 cordless phones and bases. For ME, this is definitely the trick set up. Hence, I have a landline in my kitchen, computer room, family room, bedroom and sewing room. Best of all, I never misplace a phone nor ever have to chase one down. Complete bliss for a lazy ass like myself. Anyway…

The new phones arrived today and like I’ve done twice before in the past, I happily opened the package to begin the charge and then program the phones for all the options I love. I began with the main hand set and things basically went along pretty well. Until I got to the option of naming each of the handsets to show up on the display panel. Which is kinda important, so that I know which handset goes in which room. Case in point: the phone for my bedroom reads: MASTER BDR. It’s a totally easy procedure. Well, supposedly, anyway.

Par for the course, NO where on the setup options did I find how to actually name the individual handsets, which is an option of MAJOR importance to me. At one point, I even began to panic a bit, imagining there might not even BE that option on these new phones. So okay. I finally caved and tried calling Panasonic support. Don’t even ask. Like so many other big company support services, speaking to customer support, it and of itself, was an insane circus. Oh yeah. And btw… of COURSE I had no interest in thumbing through the manual to find the answer, since as I’ve mentioned before… I am too damn lazy. I’d much rather have some guy in India take 2 hours to tell me what to do. But whatever. 

Thus… given the support insanity, I just hung up and decided to live with things as is for the time being. I was just too spent to proceed for the moment and went to sit down in the family room and began to gather up all the packing garbage to put it in the phone box and make my floor look half way decent again. Lo and behold I came across the owner’s manual and casually flipped through it only to land right smack on the page I needed for naming handsets!! Talk about miracle of miracles. I was delighted way beyond belief!! Best of all… after  reading the very easy directions, bingo. MY PHONES WERE NAMED AND ALL OPTIONS WERE THEN COMPLETED. After a mere 3 hours, mind you but by then, who cared. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Seriously. The relief I felt was indescribable.   

Oh yeah… a good 30 minutes at least, were spent on merely creating my answer machine greeting. You’d have thought I was the CEO of the Panasonic Corporation itself and needed THE perfect greeting or something. Naturally, I finally just settled on the most boring of all greetings: HI. I CAN’T GET TO THE PHONE. PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE. THANKS.  I know. I know. Entirely mundane but who cares.

So for now, despite the 3 lost hours, I think I’m back on the grid. Hopefully… without the piercing buzz on the phone line. Thank you Alexander Graham Bell! And... thanks too, for all the ingenious telephone technology thereafter.