Jack Smith was dead right about 'disprovements'
Jack Smith was dead right about 'disprovements'
By: Bill Mead
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Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
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0 responses 0 comments Hardly a week goes by that I don't think fondly of the late Jack Smith who used to write a frivolous column for the Los Angeles Times. It was the best part of the paper, stuck in the midst of ponderous stories for which the Times is still famous.
Jack and his wife grew up in Bakersfield. Unless I'm more confused than I think, I believe she was related to the Capdeville family of Tehachapi. In the distant past they ran a hotel where Tehachapi Hospital is now located. I remember at least one of Jack's columns in which he described picknicking in Tehachapi City Park with his local in-laws.
I think my favorite tidbit from Jack's columns had to do with what he referred to as disprovements, so-called technical improvements which made things actually worse. That's a great word, disprovements. There are no others which even come close to defining our modern tendency to swat flies with two-by-fours.
If Jack were writing today, I'm sure he would agree with many of us that “improved” communications, which are supposed to help us go like blazes on the information superhighway, are having exactly the opposite effect. It is now almost impossible to make contact with people and institutions that not long ago were only a phone call away. We can still punch in the right numbers but, thanks to modern science, nobody answers.
I read somewhere that the guy who invented voicemail later felt like the Frenchman who invented the guillotine thinking it would be a more-humane method of execution. You're sick of my whimpering about trying to call Symantec, the outfit that sells Norton anti-virus softwater, so I won't snivel about that anymore although I'm still mad at Symantec. In the name of fairness, let me instead beat up on the Arrowhead water people.
A few years ago, I ordered half-size water jugs from Arrowhead because the big ones were too heavy for an old man whose chest cavity had just been ripped apart for bypass surgery. I made the new arrangement with a quick phone call to a charming woman in Bakersfield. A couple of months ago I had a hernia patched up, making even the smaller jugs of water beyond my powers. When I tried to call Arrowhead to have them bring cases of gallon jugs, I discovered I now had to call an 800 number where a disembodied voice asked my business. That's unnerving to say the least. What do you say to a robot? Apparently I kept saying the wrong things because it was almost 25 minutes before a live humanoid came on the line. After putting up with several minutes of enraged screaming from me, she asked what I had said to the zombie voice. I didn't want to admit that I had said “&*%$#@” at the top of my lungs so I lied and said I had asked for “service."
That was the wrong answer, she said, adding helpfully that next time I should utter the word “representative”. That should get me through to a person soon enough to avert aploplexy, she assured me. You might jot that down in case you run out of whiskey and have to drink something tasteless.
Arrowhead isn't alone in making itself almost unreachable for the dubious benefit of shaving costs by a 10th of an inch. As more American companies follow this maddening course, the more ground they will lose to foreign competition.
If you hear that the Japanese are delivering water, give me a call. I promise I'll pick up the phone right away and you won't have to yell “representative.”
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