Hanging on the Line
Hanging on the Line
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday June 6, 2015
A dozen of us are waiting testily in the phone shop. We’re each clutching a malfunctioning device or a disputed phone bill. The atmosphere reeks of discontent.
Grudgingly, we split into three queues and align ourselves in front of the three young Ubermenschen standing behind the counter. I choose the line leading to a tall hipster-dude who looks technologically supreme behind his workstation.
With nothing to do but wait, I study the shop assistants. Hipster-dude’s black bushranger beard sits incongruously below the pale shiny dome of his head. But I admire his Lemtosh specs, which give him an air of a teenaged Woody Allen – before the neuroses embedded.
He abandons his terminal to fetch something from a back room. I notice he’s gripped from groin to ankle by a pair of jeans so tight they must be his sister’s. A long-sleeved gingham shirt with contrasting cuffs is suctioned under his waistband, the same shirt all his colleagues are wearing. I wonder if this phone company sees the irony in dressing its staff as cowboys.
Five minutes tick by and hipster-dude fails to reappear. His lady customer – one ahead of me – swivels to mouth me a “Sorry.” I give her an empathetic shrug. She turns back, rests her elbows dutifully on the counter and marks another few minutes by tapping out a ditty with polished fingernails.
The queue next to mine is becoming agitated. A burly fellow in a leather jacket is at breaking point. He sighs loudly and flaps his phone bill over his head as a female shop assistant deserts her workstation for the second time and vanishes through the rear door. Casting around for an ally, leather-jacket catches my eye:
“Bloody phone companies!” he says. “Happily take all your money but don’t wanna know you when they cock up!”
The gent behind him grunts agreement. The mood in the shop is one of barely-restrained rage.
That’s when I notice we customers are all of a certain age: there isn’t an unlined face amongst us. We’re now the serfs; our masters are the young techno-aristocrats. Since when did we depend on kids half our age to fix our mobiles and backup our lives?
I’m forever begging my teenager to help me meet the demands of my gadgets. This is a boy who at 14, could make me a Pentium chip using two Oreos, a paper clip and a ball bearing but still can’t spell biscuit.
“Just click ‘Yes’,” is his mantra.
“But what am I saying ‘Yes’ to?” I ask nervously.
“It doesn’t matter, Mum. Just say ‘Yes.’”
A movement at the counter catches my eye. The lady with the red fingernails turns to leave.
I feel a surge of optimism and dutifully step forward, proffering my iPhone 5 to hipster-dude.
“It just stopped working,” I say, fingering the cracked screen. “I tried to fix it, but it’s dead.”
My phone lies mutely on the counter. I peel off the hot-pink case and press the home button to demonstrate its uselessness. The screen remains an inky void. Stripped of its plastic finery, my iPhone looks old-fangled.
Hipster-dude begins pressing buttons in combination. In his smooth hands, my phone leaps to life and a dozen small icons reappear. Along the top, I see a little message pulsing. ‘SOS’ it reads.
“You’ve taken out the SIM card, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit sheepishly.
“It won’t like that.”
“Well, I was trying to fix it.”
“You’ve put the SIM card in upside down!”
I wonder if he’s expecting my embarrassment or my indignation. Instead, I launch a pre-emptive strike to disguise my incompetence.
“I’m out of contract, aren’t I? How much to upgrade to an iPhone 6?”
I imagine the power shifting between us.
He points to a chart on the counter-top. “If you go to this plan, you’ll get one for free.”
“Great,” I say. “I’d like a silver one please.” (Hoping I don’t sound shallow).
Hipster-dude slips away to process my new contract. I glance at the queue beside me. Leather-jacket-man is berating the girl-assistant over his phone bill.
He jabs a finger at her and loudly demands a refund.
“Calm down, sir,” she says quietly. “I’m doing the best I can.”
He throws up his hands, swipes his paperwork from the counter and storms out of the shop, just as hipster-dude returns with my new phone.
“Geez! Does that happen often?” I ask, overtaken by a sudden surge of sympathy.
“All the time,” he replies wearily. “Phones make people crazy.”
He presents me with a contract as thick as the one Gina signed to start up the Roy Hill mine. Unperturbed, I sign away the next two years of my life. Clutching my shiny new plaything, I thank him and skip out of the shop.