Lippard.Multics 1985-11-12 13:34:43 mst Tue Subject: Dave Barry on Repairs Date: Tuesday, 12 November 1985 12:21 mst From: Charlie Spitzer To: {mbx >udd>m>jjl>misc>misc} MX Service Warranty by David Barry I'm a little worried about the MX missile system. Don't get me wrong: I certainly think that we need another missile system. Better safe than sorry, that's my motto. What I'm worried about is that we won't be able to get anybody to repair the MX. You can't get anything repaired these days. Take, for example, Voyager 2, a United Stats space rocket that recently flew to Saturn to take pictures. It worked okay for a while, but then the camera got pointed in the wrong direction and started sending back pictures of outer space. This was bad public relations: taxpayers don't want to pay nine zillion dollars for pictures that look like the inside of somebody's closet with the light off. The NASA scientists claim Voyager 2 is a success anyway, but they have to claim this, because otherwise they can't ask for more money. They would have claimed Voyager 2 was a success even if it had crashed into Phoenix, Arizona. The truth is, Voyager 2 broke and they couldn't get it repaired. This is a problem not only with rockets but with other major appliances as well. If you have ever called the service department of a major department store to get an appliance repaired, you know what I am talking about: YOU: Hello, my washer - RECORDING: Thank you for calling the Service Department. All of our service representatives are smoking cigarettes and chatting; your call will be taken just as soon as somebody feels like taking your call. Thank you. (For the next thirty-five minutes, you listen to a medley of songs by Barry Manilow, who has written a great many songs. Perhaps too many. Then an actual service representative comes on the line.) SERVICE REP: Thank you for calling the Service Department. How may we serve you? YOU: It's our washer. One of the drive belts snared my wife by the arm and she can't get loose and we can't turn it off and we're worried about what will happen when it gets to the spin cycle. SERVICE REP: When did you purchase the washer? YOU: A year ago, I guess. Could you hurry please? It's almost done with the rinse cycle. SERVICE REP: Then I'm afraid you are not covered under the ninety-day warranty. But don't feel bad: nobody is ever covered under the ninety-day warranty. That's why we offer it. Did you buy a maintenance agreement? YOU: I don't KNOW, for God's sake. (Your wife screams in the background.) Please, just get someone out here. SERVICE REP: We will have a serviceperson in your area in 1986. Will someone be at home? YOU: I imagine my wife will. What's left of her. SERVICE REP: Fine. We will have someone call you during the latter half of 1986 to let you know exactly what month the serviceperson will be there. Thank you for calling the Service Department. A few years ago, we had a serviceperson come to our house regularly to try to repair our television set. He had this ritual: He would arrive with six hundred pounds of tools, select a screwdriver, take the back off the television, and stare at the insides as if he had been raised by a primitive Brazilian jungle tribe and had never seen a television before. Then he would put the cover back on, load his six hundred pounds of tools back into the truck, and leave. Once, to prove he was sincerely interested in the problem, he took the television with him and kept it for several months. Finally, my wife and I took the cover off ourserlves and blew on the insides of the television; it worked fine after that, and the serviceperson didn't come around anymore, which was sort of a shame, because he was getting to be like one of the family. Another time, the motor on our forty-five-dollar vacuum cleaner broke, so I took the vacuum to a serviceperson, who took it apart but couldn't fix the motor. So I sent it to the factory, which fixed the motor for twenty-five dollars but didn't put the vacuum cleaner together again. So finally I took the parts to the Service Center, which is where people go when they are really desperate. You go in and take a number, then you sit with the other appliance owners, who are clutching their toasters and radios and hoping the counter person will call their numbers before their food and water runs out. Finally the counter person called my number, and I explained to him that my vacuum cleaner was not broken, that I merely wanted him to put it together again. I had trouble getting this message across, because the counter person had obviously spent several years in an IQ-reduction program. He'd say: "Well, what's wrong with it?" And I'd say: "Nothing's wrong with it. I just want you to put it together." And he'd say: "Well, what's wrong with it?" And so on. Eventually, he got the picture, and he took my vacuum cleaner parts to the fellows back in the Shop, and together they came up with an estimate of eighty-seven dollars to put them together again. This means that we would have paid a total of $112 to repair a forty-five-dollar vacuum cleaner, so instead we bought a new vacuum cleaner, which is, of course, what they wanted us to do in the first place. Well, I'm afraid the government will have the same sort of problem. They'll buy a snappy new MX missile system, and everything will be fine until the Russians attack us, at which point we'll have bombs raining down on Ohio while the guys down at the Pentagon are sitting in the War Room, listning to Barry Manilow on the telephone. Think about it. [reprinted without permission from "Bad Habits" (New York: Doubleday Inc., 1985]