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.

Stranger Danger

Stranger Danger
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday July 5, 2014

I hadn’t found myself a target of public aggression since pub crawl days. I certainly wasn’t expecting a verbal stoush in the childrenswear department of Target. A week later, I’m still feeling rattled. (Why do I take things to heart?)

It was mid-afternoon and the shop floor was quiet. I was rifling through the flannelette pyjamas, searching for pink or purple ones for my 4-year-old. (She’ll only wear a two-tone palette).

Somewhere nearby, a toddler was coughing uncontrollably – a raspy bark that set my teeth on edge. In between hacks, I could hear his attempts to suck in a lungful of air, only to choke on another volley of coughs.

The sound of that child’s spluttering wormed its way into my head until it was all I could hear. Around me, shoppers stopped talking. Two women in Boyswear craned their necks trying to get a fix on the sick youngster. I could spot neither child nor carer. I could only picture a distraught toddler in a pram, his anxious mum trying to soothe him.

I rounded a rack of cardigans in Girlswear 1-7yrs. A small man with a chirpy daughter in his arms was sifting through a pile of jumpers. He acknowledged me with a smile then mimed his bottom lip thrust forward. “Poor bubba” he said, and we both nodded.

“Where’s it coming from?” I asked.

“Over there somewhere,” and he motioned towards an aisle stacked with nappies and baby food.

As we turned to look, a woman in her 60’s with a stylish silver bob rounded the corner of the aisle. She was pushing an upmarket stroller containing the distressed toddler, a blonde poppet about two.

“Poor thing, is she okay?” I said to the grandmother.

“Oh, she’s fine!”

“Sounds like croup, doesn’t it? My son used to get it as a toddler – it was awful.”

“It’s actually none of your business what she’s got! For your information, it’s just a cold. She got it from day care, all right?”

Uncertain how to react, I offered her a weak smile. At that, she gave me both barrels: “You think you’re a bloody doctor do you? Do you?”

“Um, no. I just remember that barking sound they make when they get croup.”

“Well, who the hell do you think you are? Mind your own business!”

And with that parting shot, she marched away with the still-wheezing toddler. My heart was thumping. I turned around to see the friendly dad, rigid with surprise. He shrugged and said quietly: “She sounds pretty sick to me!”

I made a beeline for the checkout, still trembly from the altercation. I handed over a pair of pj’s and was reaching for my wallet when the grandmother with the toddler arrived at the checkout next to mine.

“I’m so sick of you paranoid mothers!” she snapped at me.

I froze in fright. Shoppers swivelled in our direction. She repeated: “There’s nothing wrong with her. Got it?”

Two rows of checkout operators and their customers were agog. I tried to shrink and pretend she wasn’t addressing me. I hurriedly tapped in my pin, stuffed the pyjamas into my bag and sped outside, keen to escape my bemused audience. I scrabbled for my phone and rang a girlfriend: “I’ve just been shop-raged! Some woman just had a real go at me! I’m still shaking!”

“Oooh that happened to me once!” she replied. “I burst into tears in the middle of the shop!”

My department store stoush has dogged my thoughts. Two nights ago, I dreamt about that grandmother, replaying her diatribe in my head. I woke up still bewildered about what I’d said that set her off. Had she misread my concern as impertinence? Had I sounded judgmental?

I thought back to the last time my 7-year-old had croup. His fever spiked at 39 degrees. It was terrifying: he was disoriented and stiff, his movements jerky. I raced him to emergency and we spent a night on the ward, spooned together on a gurney while he barked himself hoarse.

Perhaps, after that trip to hospital, I did overreact in Target. Obviously that nanna resented my solicitude about her two-year-old charge. Or maybe she snapped because a stranger expressing concern made her feel negligent. Perhaps she really believed her granddaughter just had a cold.

I’m not good at dealing with hostility – a tongue-lashing like that and I fall apart. But I’m usually adept at reading strangers. I can normally pick the ones who’re open and chatty. I’ll pass over those whose body language says ‘do not disturb.’ I enjoy making small talk, but there’s a delicate balance between being friendly and appearing pushy. On this occasion, I may have poked a lioness with a stick.