The time had come for my husband to part ways with his home-grown, nurtured, and impressively functional PC. Rather than send it to recycling heaven we decided to ship it to my mom – who became a widow not long after my parents moved to Florida – about 1,300 miles from the majority of family up in New York.
My mother, who never had a computer before, was wired in no time. She took to the web world like a bee takes to honey. Through the years, my husband fielded her tech support calls (I was backup), which became less and less frequent as her computing skills and online agility grew. During my last visit, the hard drive on her second computer, a new Dell, bit the dust – which was either good or bad timing depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Dell had a replacement delivered the next day. The tech installed it in record time and blew out the door. When it was time, we fired it up. No luck. Shoot, I thought – thinking about my flight out in two days. My mother suggests calling Dell’s support line. So we call support and I start the “conversation” because I’m the one who knows about such things…I’ve been there before, you know.
After about a half hour talking with a young man from India with an Anglo name that I can’t recall, I’m getting a little testy. It wasn’t so much the communication barrier (Ok, that’s “L” as in Larry…Do you mean “L” as in Llama? {or maybe Lama?}) that was causing my anxiety as it was the clock ticking down on my departure to the opposite coast (yeah, right!). And it kind of went downhill from there – that’s when mom took the phone and restored some semblance of helpdesk order. I walked out to insure that I didn’t interrupt anymore in my zeal “to help.” Soon I overheard them talking nicely, congenially. With patience and respect. OK. I pop back in. The call continues…now we’re wiggling wires and switching this and flipping that – no luck. We try one last thingy-dingy and it works. Mom says good bye to her friend in India and informs me that I need to learn how to be nicer if I want to have better service. Touché.
That particular visit was pivotal for a few reasons. Like a new hard drive, my mind was fully scrubbed of old stereotypical notions about senior adults and computers. I witnessed first-hand my mother’s competence and comfort in resolving the hardware snafu. And I was reassured – one last time – that when it comes to personal computing, my mother was definitely up for the good, the bad, and the ugly (in this case, my helpdesk phone manners). In the end, the benefits of being online far outweighed the hassles of maintaining the technology.
AFTERWORD: Recently I called Delta to change an international flight seat assignment, which wasn’t showing for some reason online. When I connected with the helpdesk agent in India, I was patient and friendly. And I also got the seat I wanted. 🙂
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