How May I Direct Your Call?

We have a new telephone system at work. It went "live" last Friday, and most of us showed up for work on Monday to a system that now runs through the Internet connection somehow. It's called VOIP or some such nonsense, so if you're a technie, I guess you can appreciate how advanced our campus is now. (More likely, you're laughing that we actually bought what is probably already outdated technology, but that can remain your little secret.) All I know is the cable that connects the phone to my computer is too short, so the new phone has to sit right next to my computer. I've had to rearrange my desk because of this phone.

We had been warned for much of the spring semester that we would be getting the new system, so this isn't exactly a surprise. However, the date was always a bit fuzzy. Turns out the optimum time to change an entire phone system is the week before the fall semester begins. Nothing much going on that week in preparation for the 20,000 students arriving on Monday, I guess. Tomorrow's the first "official" day of work for all of us, so I can imagine a lot of surprised people coming into their offices and finding that the system they're comfortable with is now gone.

(This follows on the heels of our regular "update your computer login password" message, for which you have to be on campus. Anyone not on campus during summer school is probably unaware that you won't be able to log on to the system until your account has been reset. Shame on you for not being here in the middle of July when everyone was "told" that you'd need a new password. You had 14 days then to come up with a new password. You shoulda been here then.)

The new phones themselves showed up last week. I came into my office one day (Wednesday? I think it was...) to find two phones sitting beside my computer: the old one and a new one. The new one looks rather hi-tech and intimidating. It has buttons on it that make no sense to me yet. (Some of them are called "soft buttons," according to an e-mail we received. I hate to imagine which ones are the "hard buttons" and why they're "hard.") We're supposed to have training sessions to learn how to use these newfangled machines, but the training isn't scheduled until the second week of classes--just a couple of days before the Labor Day Weekend, to be exact, and almost three weeks after we got the new phones. One of the training sessions is even scheduled for the Friday before Labor Day. Good luck finding anyone on campus that day. So for the first couple of weeks of the semester, we're on our own with the new phones.

That's a problem. I do have to use the new phone before I can receive any "formal" training on it. Yes, "they" did send out a one-page set of instructions, but those aren't incredibly helpful, being mere bullet points on some incredibly simple tasks such as answering your phone. (I find it amusing that at a college campus we had to have instructions on how to pick up a receiver. That's the first instruction: "Lift the handset." Sigh.) I think I may have set up my new password and I have changed my message for incoming calls, but I'm almost afraid to call the number to find out.

Speaking of numbers, that's probably the best part of the new system. Everyone has a new phone number. Everyone. The entire campus. You're probably thinking that can't be too bad. After all, we all have to learn new numbers for everyone, so it's pretty equal. And it's only several thousand phone numbers, right? However, our campus decided to add a clever wrinkle to the mix. We aren't all actually getting new numbers. Some are, certainly, but most of us are just getting a number that used to belong to someone else. I, for example, have a number that once belonged to a classified staff member in the Music Department. My old number is now in the hands of one of the theater professors. And this is true for almost every number on campus. Instead of having one or perhaps two people be inconvenienced for a week or so putting everyone's existing extensions into the system, the Powers That Be (The Phone Gods?) decided instead just to reassign the numbers we already had, creating a massive number of links across the campus. That way everyone can share in the misery.

How bad could that be, you ask? Well, perhaps you could ask the dean who has spent much of the week responding to calls about veteran's benefits (not at all one of the areas in her job description). Or talk to the vice president who's been fielding calls for financial aid (also not one of the areas in her job description). Or better yet, ask the folks in the campus security department, who spent much of the first couple of days answering calls from students who were having trouble registering for their classes. It seems that the new emergency number for the security department used to be the helpline number for registration problems. That must have been a fun time; they had to shut the number down because it was interfering with actual emergencies. And on and on and on.

We've all been asked to help out. In fact, we've been asked to "please inform the caller of the new extension for the person they are calling" if someone attempts to use a number that has been assigned to someone else for, oh, say, 13 years already (like me). So in addition to my usual duties as teacher and advisor and mentor, I have to add receptionist or switchboard operator. This would, of course, necessitate each one of us knowing whose old number we have, a piece of knowledge I expect very few on campus to obtain. We've also been asked to forward or transfer or whatever the appropriate lingo is nowadays all calls that come to us mistakenly. Did I also mention earlier that we're not going to be trained on these functions until the end of the second week of the semester?

You might have also noted earlier that I said I came back to my office to find two phones sitting beside my computer. That's not a mistake. Each of us is also expected to disconnect our old phones--imagine how much furniture moving that might necessitatein some offices--and put it in a box in our hallway marked for the old phones. At some point, someone is supposed to come by and pick all of them up. I've actually toyed with the idea of taking all of the boxes of phones in the hallways across campus and dumping them in the courtyard of the new classroom/office building as an art installation for tomorrow's convocation. Sort of a monument to ineptitude.

The box for our hallway, by the way, is outside the door to my office. It's already filling up. And no one has yet picked up any of the boxes scattered in hallways in every building across campus. The image above is what we had in the hallway outside the department office.

One more little note. Because the phones are directly connected to our computers and our campus system, each time someone calls, we get a wav message. I don't really need more stuff in my e-mail file, frankly, but that's where all of the missed call messages are going to show up. I suppose some people are so plugged into the world that they want to know all of the calls they've missed, but I don't care. If someone calls when I'm not in the office, they can leave a message or call again another time. I don't need a record of each and every one that I've missed showing up among all of the dozens of e-mails that I already get each day.

This summer, my honors class read Lynne Truss' Talk to the Hand, a book about the rudeness that has become epidemic in society today. One of her chapters is entitled "Why Am I the One Doing This?" In it, she talks about how so much of what used to be considered customer service is now provided by the customer, not the business. Want to activate your new credit card? Punch in dozens of numbers; you won't be getting a person on the phone any longer who will take your information down. Want some help in a store finding an item? Good luck in some stores locating anyone who can help. You can just serve yourself.

I've been asking myself Truss' question since we started this nonsense with the phone system. Why am I the one who has to change my number? Why do I have to get new business cards with a different number on them? Why do I have to notify former students and my family and my doctor and dentist and outside organizations that my number has changed? Why do I have to program my own phone? Why do I have to transfer calls to someone else who had this number just a bit more than a week ago? Why do I have to unplug my old phone myself and put it in the box? Why am I going to have to look at and then delete all of the e-mails telling me that I missed telephone calls? Why, indeed, am I the one doing this?

Yeah, I know it will all settle down at some point. We'll all learn the new system. Eventually, almost all of the people who need my "new" number will have it. And we'll get to the stage where we can all use the phones with some measure of proficiency. However, it's four days until we start the fall semester, and I still don't know how to retrieve messages. It's not that I've received any--at least, I don't think I have--but then again, who knows my new number anyway? I still don't know how to transfer calls if I have any for someone else. I haven't seen the theater professor to explain to him that he might be getting dozens of calls from gay and lesbian students who want to know about the club for which I am the advisor. I'm tired of looking at a big cardboard box of old phones in the hallway. I want to know who's responsible for this nonsense so that he/she/they can be the subject of public ridicule. I guess I have to settle for this rant for now.