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Telus like it is

This is a story about Brian and Kevin. I’ve never met Brian or Kevin and only spoken to them briefly but they pretty much bookend modern corporate life.
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This is a story about Brian and Kevin. I’ve never met Brian or Kevin and only spoken to them briefly but they pretty much bookend modern corporate life. Most of us, in dealing with the faceless, nameless monoliths that epitomize corporate culture, run across way too many Kevins and not nearly enough Brians.

And that’s a strange thing when you stop to think about it.

Most people are hardwired to be Brians. Most people, especially when they start out in a new job, a job with promise for the future and a clear shot at advancement and all the benefits rising through the ranks brings, strive to be Brians. With the exception of pathologically damaged people, no one sets out in life to be Kevin. Kevins are created. Too often, as, I suspect, Kevins like the ones I met up with last week are created by the social and cultural forces prevalent where they work.

Corporate culture creates Kevins.

Not all corporate cultures, mind you. Just, it seems, far too many.

Brian and Kevin both work for the phone company you love to hate: Telus.

Telus is not enjoying what most companies would think of as a particularly good reputation in Whistler right now. For that matter, I’m not certain Telus is enjoying a good reputation in any of its markets. Largely, the animosity people feel toward Telus has its roots in the corporate culture which, naturally, has its roots in the company’s top management. The culture — toxic — is marked by arrogance, incompetence, indifference and a general distrust of both its customers and, oddly enough, the other people who work for the company.

The brass at Telus will deny this. They’ll say their customers are the most important thing in the world to them and their employees are the most important thing in the world to them. But sayin’ it don’t make it so.

My current sojourn into Telus Hell began early in February, around the time it began to look like we’d actually be moving into our new WHA digs at Nita Lake. All we wanted was a simple answer to a simple question: Will we have phone service when we move at the end of the month?

The answers we got were: Yes; no; yes but we’d have to change our phone number; no but we’d be able to keep our phone number when we eventually got phone service; I don’t know whether or not you’ll have phone service; and, of course, maybe.

During one memorable conversation, this exchange took place.

“We’re not sure the site is ready for phone service to be hooked up.”

“The builder says it is. I have his number, why don’t you call him?”

“We can’t make outside calls.”

“What?”

“We can’t make outside calls.”

“Okay, I have the number of your VP of customer service. How about giving her a call and getting to the bottom of this?”

“We can’t make inside calls either.”

The last answer we got was “probably” and that’s the one we were stuck with.

Last Wednesday morning, moving day, our phone was dead. Trying to stay positive, we hoped that meant we’d have a phone in our new place.

There were Telus trucks on site when we brought over the first load. They were gone when we brought over the second. A neighbour said she was told it’d be mid-March before we got service and Telus would be couriering her a cell phone to use until then.

This was not happy news. It was worse because when anyone phoned our old number they heard, “This number is not in service.” That’s not the message you want playing when you run a home-based business like my Perfect Partner’s tax business.

So we tried to do a simple thing, get it reconnected at the old address.

The first Kevin couldn’t understand why we wanted to reconnect a phone in a place we no longer lived. In answer to my plea to get service at our new home, she replied, “We aren’t showing any disruption to service in that area.”

“There isn’t any service there to disrupt,” I replied. “It’s a new development. No one has service. You’ll have to install service before you can disrupt it.”

For 30 minutes she kept me on hold, interrupting occasionally to ask if she could keep me on hold or to tell me she wasn’t showing any service interruption in my area. I suspect she was eating lunch and waiting to see how long I’d persevere.

Finally, she tried conferencing me to Kevin. It didn’t work. So she gave me Kevin’s number.

Kevin — the real Kevin — answered right away. He worked in some tech group. I figured he’d know the answer about when we might get phone service or when our number might be reconnected at the old house.

Thirty seconds into explaining the problem, Kevin said, “Who are you? Are you Tech?”

“No, I’m customer.”

“I can’t talk to customers. You’re not supposed to have my number. They’re not supposed to give my number out. I can’t help you.”

And, he couldn’t.

So back to Telus phone tree hell, that infuriating, disembodied voice so universally reviled if any of us ever actually meet the woman behind it I fear we’ll go postal on her.

Which got me to another Kevin who wouldn’t help me because I didn’t know my account number which was on my bill which was in one of 30 boxes at my new home which didn’t have phone service. She hung up on me.

In the meantime, Davin Peterson, from Base Technology hustled over at a moment’s plea and installed high-speed wireless for us. His resident and visitor wireless service is cropping up all over town and at least gave us internet capability while Telus left us on hold.

We eventually ran across Brian when my Perfect Partner did what I won’t do. She left a message for the VP of PR telling him he was going to have a PR fiasco on his hands if this wasn’t resolved ASAP.

Brian called shortly thereafter. He’s on some kind of swat team you seem to only get access to if you represent a viable threat. Brian got our phone hooked up in less than 24 hours.

But only our phone.

When the Telus guys met us late last Friday and suddenly our phone sprang to life, I told them there were going to make 32 families very happy. They said they were only there to hook up our phone; the others would have to wait until sometime this week.

Oh, and could we not let them know that we’d gotten a phone?

Now that’s service.