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Back in the day, in homes across our land, newspapers — those once-treasured carriers of life affirming information — were stuffed between the walls and rafters to ward off the assault of frigid winter winds.
Winter of a different sort has brought us a different insulation —that ubiquitous device that has migrated from our kitchen wall, generally one to a family, and multiplied on its way to our blue jeans’ back pockets, generally one to a person. With an R-rating somewhere around 7000, that ever-present piece of technology isolates all manner of intrusions from …
Us.
Constituents and Customers and friends and other members of one’s family.
People who need, or at least want, to you know, know stuff.
The telephone once connected us to people who could help us by telling us why the last payment we sent didn’t show up on our credit card, or whether our vehicle was ready to be picked up at the repair shop.
With the telephone we could figure out how to make our television work. With the addition of an answering machine, we gained a way to let Mother express her dissatisfaction with our failing to visit as often as she’d like.
“Are you still living on this planet,” came her recorded query on our return from a trip to the grocery store that did not include stopping at Grandma’s house so she could coddle “her babies.”
The once optional answering machine now comes built into all our phones as voice mail. Unfortunately, it too often does not include the voice part.
I called my former Internet provider the other week.
“Hi, you’re in the right place for customer service support,” a voice answered after a few rings and a menu telling me to “Press 6 for Customer Assistance.”
“You can tell us what you need in your own words,” the machine went on. “How can we help you today?”
“In my own words?!” Even the machine thinks it’s talking to a machine.
This has been coming on for awhile. As a daily news reporter, I often would want to chat with politicians who were important to the story of the day. Used to, I could get the important person on the line fairly easily or, worst case, his receptionist would pleasantly, and humanly, tell me Himself is not available right now.
Voicemail has done away with both the receptionist and, as near as I can tell, the important personage. Calls now are often answered by a machine that asks for my name and why I would like to bother the aforementioned source of valuable information. There was no proof my query ever was actually passed to the VIP with whom I had wanted to speak.
In fact, those machines are the root cause of news reports that end with “We reached out to the important personage for a comment but we did not immediately receive a reply.”
The calls I do not make are even more aggravating. Beginning at a couple minutes after 9 a.m., my phone starts ringing. Most of the time, it rings five times, my welcome message comes on, and the machine hangs up. I know it’s nothing personal, the machine has several thousand more people to wake up so it doesn’t mind that a human did not answer my home phone.
In fact, the machine does not even know it’s calling a home phone. It’s job is to keep dialing numbers — 555-3457, 555-3458, 555-3459 — until a human answers, at which time it tells the hapless homeowner: “Please hold for an important call from Ace Auto Information with special news for people who drive less than 50 miles a day.”
The specter of missing humanity is the reason I stand in line at the store cash register rather than at the self-checkout. I crave human contact. I enjoy chatting with the clerk at the cash register as she (or he) rings in my purchases, takes my payment and, sometimes, gives me change.
I also enjoy learning where she is from and how she got her name and the meaning of the artwork peeking from the end of her shirt sleeve. I’ve collected some interesting stories from those conversations.
Odds are the next time I am in that store, that clerk will be on a different shift or register. But for that minute or five, we will have been two humans connecting on a whirling bus ride through the cosmos.
Text & images ©2025 John Messeder. John is an award-winning environmental storyteller, nemophilist and social anthropologist, and lives in Gettysburg, PA. He may be contacted at john@johnmesseder.com
