Supersize me, the AT&T way

File this under "etc."

I had one simple goal -- add a line to my AT&T family wireless plan for my son. I know, I know, I did check other carriers' plans and deals, since my contract with AT&T ran out long ago. But for various reasons I decided to stay with them. Why trade a known headache for an unknown one? Anyway, I went online with every intention of being finished in the space of 10 minutes. How naïve...

I wanted to get a basic plan, with just voice and minimal text messaging -- say 20 texts per month -- so that he can reach us in case of an emergency, but not abuse this disembodied conversation mode. And you would think that it would be easy to get this, right? Well, not so much. The only text option that came up on the screen was unlimited texting for $20/month. This was infinitely more than I needed, so I initiated a chat with a representative. He was effusively polite, and every time I volunteered information or responded to a question he thanked me very much for sharing this information. After several volleys, in which I thought I had conveyed my dilemma clearly and succinctly, he came back with "So, if I am understanding you correctly, you wish to change the text messaging plan on your phone." I did a rapid-fire "No, no, no," trying to get ahead of his rogue fingers as I imagined them poised to hit "change plan." You see, I am still traumatized from a recent experience with the cordial AT&T customer service representatives who "helped" me with an issue.

Just to give you the flavor for that episode, in the process of resolving a signal issue, they implemented such changes in my texting and data plans as to require several weeks of phone calls with the AT&T business office, a call and a correspondence with the Attorney General of Massachusetts, and a follow-up call with AT&T on the heels of their communication with the AG. So, no, I am not interested in having them "help" me with plan changes. I politely excused myself from the chat and decided to tackle it on my own.

But first I chose to distract myself from the problem at hand by doing another task that I had meant to do: increase my monthly minutes. This I was able to do without any glitches, and my success encouraged me to try again with the new line. Perhaps I missed something the first time?

Having considered my choices at this point, I made the decision that I would pay for a limited number of text messages for my son, at $.20/message, and this would take care of things. Smugly congratulating myself on such a creative solution, I went to complete the purchase. After addressing just a couple of minor issues stemming from the fact that my billing address is a PO Box and not a street address, and because lately everyone except the USPS has decided that I have played a joke on them by giving a non-existent address (don't get me started on the joys of living in rural America), I was almost home. I just needed to input my credit card information and... Wait a second! What's this? A credit check consent? I had to give them my social security number and consent to a credit check? Because I tacked an additional $9.99 monthly service fee to my (much larger than that) bill? After being a customer for nearly 6 years? After being able to up my monthly minutes by more than $9.99/month, without being subjected to a credit check?!!

Well, I did what anyone in my position would have done: I ignored this prompt hoping that it was optional. But it wasn't. Fill it in or else take yourself to a brick-and-mortar store to get this settled. Which is what I am choosing to do. But there is a larger moral here.

How did we get to this place, where our anti-trust protections have resulted in basically two gargantuan corporations essentially screwing the public in any way they see fit? Why do they get to dictate the devices and services that I need to purchase? How is this a free market? And how is it that this technology, whose intent is to make our lives so much easier, made me go through a bewildering amount of useless machinations only to end up with what? An offer to take my social security number and subject me to a credit check? Really?

And lest AT&T feel singled out by my rant, this is the trend with many events and purchases in life. Home insurance, for example, which, despite rising premiums, does not give you a penny towards rebuilding a retaining wall that collapses in a flood. In fact, the system is set up in such a way as to require you to file a claim, get it rejected and give the company the reason to fire you as a customer for filing too many claims. Health insurance (I don't have to remind you the galloping pace of the rise in those premiums), which covers less and less every year. Cable companies, computer manufacturers, automobile vendors, they are the ones that seem to know better than I what it is that I need, and they constantly and with impunity wrestle me into straightjackets of their packages. Where am I, the customer in all this? This old familiar strategy to maximize returns has been so successful in the food business that its legacy is the obesity epidemic, proliferation of chronic disease and shortening life spans. Is this really how we want to continue?  

I will get that line for my son, and I will get only what I need. I would prefer not to be so dependent on this stuff; alas, I am. But mark my words, there is enough bad taste building among my fellow humans to start exploring alternatives. I only wish that the government were really in the business of protecting its citizens from unethical practices rather than pandering to the highest bidder. I am ready to stop being viewed as a giant walking ROI potential, and start being respected as a citizen and a human. How about you?                

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Why easy is not always good

My mother-in-law is a typesetter. She will not read a book unless it is not only appealing in its content, but also pleasing to the eye. When I was in medical school, she did quite a bit of work for medical textbook publishers. Comparing books typeset by her to what I was grinding through on a daily (and nightly basis) incensed her: unwieldy tables appearing three pages away from the corresponding text, small letters crammed to capacity onto oversized pages, few illustrations -- all baffling, annoying (and easily fixable) transgressions against readability. Yet, like all budding docs of all generations, I plowed through these morasses of knowledge without giving its readability much thought -- this was just what you did to get to your goal.

Yesterday I was listening to a program where the author Amy Chua was interviewed about her (ahem) embattled autobiography Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Ms. Chua, though evenly humored throughout the interview, was on the defensive nearly the entire time, explaining how the intent of her opus has been grossly misunderstood by the public, thanks to attacks by critics on her parenting style. And granted, looking at the book as a parenting manual through the prism of our Western parenting norms is a bit disturbing. Yet putting its events in a culturally appropriate context, as well as looking at the content as a narrative rather than a guide, leads to completely different conclusions.

Why am I bringing up Amy Chua's interview after talking about my conquest of the unreadable? Well, it seems that ease is what we have come to expect from everything. What I mean by this is that not only do we expect easily readable texts, but we also expect people to present themselves in such a way as to make it easy for us to like them. Why else change your appearance through life-threatening eating disorders and grueling surgeries, get coached on how to make friends and influence people, and comment on how unlikable some of our female politicians are? Is this not a triumph of form over substance?

Amy Chua clearly bucks this trend in her book and is paying the price. But what worries me is that we are all paying a price. By creating another false dichotomy of "she is nice" or "he is nasty", we have eschewed a more realistic view of our human foibles. We are all nice sometimes and nasty at others. Yet this dichotomy has proven supremely fruitful to our political discourse, where for 30 years this new reality has been taking root. And it has born fruit, so that now people who do not hold similar opinions to ours are summarily dismissed as "nasty" or idiotic, and we are satisfied to surround ourselves with "nice" like-minded sycophants. How primitive it renders our political and social interactions!

Ms. Chua's immigrant parents' philosophy resonated with my upbringing. Coming from lands of uncertainty and deprivation, as immigrants, our parents subscribed to Maslow's pyramid and taught us that economic security trumped everything else. This is why only certain career choices were acceptable, while others were relegated to the back burner of a hobby. These choices were not about ease, but about doing what we were taught was the right thing. As John Adams said:

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine.

We all set priorities, and some of them may not be easy. I myself still read books even if they are not all that well presented; my priorities are content and writing style, though, to be sure, I do not frown upon the beauty of the visual form. I even enjoy characters who in, their multidimensionality, are a challenge to like. And I have learned in the rest of my life to enjoy people who do not necessarily hold easy or quick appeal for me, yet in the long run prove to add unimaginable richness to my life. Nietzsche coined the famous quote "What does not break you will make you stronger." In all aspects of our lives, while, based on Nietzsche's statement, adversity is a sufficient but not necessary road to strength, pushing ourselves a little bit out of our stuporous ease may prove to be one timely remedy.

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