Never mind Cyber Space, what about Phone Space?

I got a phone call tonight that struck me as a Very New Thing, and it got me thinking in that grandiose universe-pondering way we all sometimes indulge in. (At least I hope we all do, or I'm a schmuck.) The phone call I got was from a restaurant I have reservations at this Saturday. I had made this reservation a couple days ago, and now it's Thursday, and I picked up the phone when it rang and there was a lady calling me to confirm that we really did plan to show up at the restaurant Saturday evening for dinner. I just blurted out, "Holy cow, now restaurants call to confirm reservations? I thought only doctors' offices did that!"

The woman chuckled and answered, "Well, usually we only call for parties of ten or more, but it's very busy this time of year, and I'm going to have to close out our reservations, so I am just making sure that we really have no spots left to offer." (A diplomatic way of saying she's calling to make sure we don't stand them up.)

But I really wasn't ready to move on. I said, "That is just the darndest thing. A restaurant is calling me."

Again she laughed, and finally I said, "Well, I have someone flying in from out of town for this dinner, so by all means, we do intend to be there Saturday."

She responded, "In that case, we will have a table waiting for you." It was all quite amicable, and I got off the phone feeling a bit as if I'd had a chat with a friend.

The thing is, I don't really think they'd be doing all this calling if they didn't have a reasonable expectation that they'd reach a lot of the people they were phoning. After all, people probably don't usually call them back, unless they threaten to cancel the reservation, I guess. So I'm guessing what makes this feasible is cell phones, and that phone technology in general has expanded the telephone's role in our lives. My sense is that "phone space" has become a real world, much like cyberspace, a place where we are an abstraction of ourselves, and a place where the social rules are slightly different, where genuine bonds form easily but fleetingly.

There was another incident recently. I wanted to buy firewood, and because the price of gas heat is supposed to be so high this winter, firewood is actually pretty dear right now. I looked in the local advertising flyer and saw one entry offering seasoned oak for sale. So I called. I could immediately tell I had gotten someone in her truck because of the plentiful background noise. She quoted me a price, made a few soothing side comments to her child, who was clearly a passenger, and explained that she really couldn't take my number down right then, but could I please call back and she would not answer and I could leave my phone number on her voice mail? I said I'd be in touch, and I got off the phone. I decided not to call her right back because I hadn't yet priced wood elsewhere.

But here's the thing about the modern age. You can't just call someone and not leave tracks, at least not if you haven't turned on caller ID blocking. Twenty minutes later she called me back to talk me into a load of wood she had right then because she was in my neighborhood. I was going to give her the brush-off when she distractedly told me this involved story about how she was going to drop this wood at one lady's house but the lady wanted her to bring it around back and she never does this because it means leaving the pavement in the truck but the lady's husband had just left her and her OWN husband had just left her and she felt a certain kinship because of that and agreed to leave the pavement and now the truck was stuck and the wood sale could not go through and could she perhaps instead drop the wood off at my house as soon as she got unstuck?

Yikes. I realize I'm a pushover, but what do you say to that, really?

And really, part of it was just this weirdness of getting the blow-by-blow of someone's tough day because they're calling me from their cell phone while it's happening. If she had called to tell me this story the next day, it just wouldn't have had the same effect at all, nor would it have made any sense for me to be her next customer because of proximity.

Ultimately, we made the wood deal a few days later, because her truck didn't get unstuck at all. But the point is that sale was closed by saga-via-cell-phone, nothing more.

Which leads me to my last Phone Space story, the one where I make friends with the United Airlines' automatic voice-recognition phone maze for delayed baggage. I travelled recently to, let's just call it a third world country. I don't want to disparage it in public. But it was far far away, and my stay there was more-than-usually wearing, and I and my business partner had three long legs to fly back. It being a third world country, our first flight left two hours late, and that meant we missed our connection, and that meant our baggage didn't make it home with us.

At first we thought this was no big deal. Frankly, we were so happy to be home, we were probably the most cheerful reporters of lost baggage in the history of the airline industry. We had flown on three different airlines, so we realized things would need some sorting-out. But then it took a week to get all four bags returned to us. And since my partner had to leave only a few days later for another trip, I was the one left to track the bags down.

Every time I phoned the United Airlines delayed baggage 800 number, I had to first have a conversation with the automated phone maze. I probably called him 45 times. Every single time, I eventually wound up talking to a live, human agent, and I developed some mini-friendships with several of them as well, but this automatic voice was the one consistent feature of the experience. I found out I could mostly skip him by just saying "Agent" right away, but usually I didn't, preferring instead to conduct my business with him until I stumped him, which was a lot of fun.

He would ask me to say "delayed bag" if that applied to me. I would say it. He would say, "I think you said delayed bag, is that correct? Please say yes or no." I'd say "yes." It would go on like that; where did I file my report? What was my name? Each time I answered, he'd tell me what he thought I said, and I'd confirm it. When it got to my name, he didn't dare try to pronounce it, so there'd just be this silence where he was supposed to say my name, and then he'd spell it. But the fun really came when he asked me where I had originally checked the bags. Like I said, this was a third world country, and it just wasn't on his list of possible choices. So I'd say the name of the city and country, and he'd guess what he thought I'd said. It was our little game. "I think you said Los Angeles, California. Is that correct? Please say yes or no." "I think you said Saint Louis, Missouri. Is that correct? Please say yes or no." "I think you said London, England. Is that correct? Please say yes or no." "I think you said Bangladesh. Is that correct? Please say yes, or no." Once I burst out laughing, and I swear he was taken aback.

He'd guess three times, and then he'd express regret that he hadn't been able to help me, and he would pass me off to a live agent. But I always liked our little chats. 170 hours after our flight landed, we got our last piece of luggage back. The next day, I phoned the automated guy to say goodbye. He no longer had my name in his system.

Men can be fickle like that.