More primitive societies probably would have invented a god to blame for such things as malevolent traffic lights and automated phone systems. But we know the cause is good intentions gone awry, somebody trying to make life easier and failing miserably or somebody trying to save a little money and making everyone else's life a little less pleasant.
But if there were such a thing as the god of automated phone systems, and let's say there is, I ran afoul of him recently. It involved an airline. I could call it Airline X, but you've probably guessed it anyway.
I had to call USAir about a flight bringing a relative for a visit. Long ago I had learned that airline timetables are not 100 percent reliable and to call the airline to confirm the arrival time before setting off for the airport.
I called soon after the advertised takeoff time, about an hour before the scheduled arrival. Once upon a time a human answered the phone. The conversation would have gone something like this:
"Hi, I would like to check on the arrival of Flight 321 in Baltimore."
"That plane is scheduled for an on-time arrival at 11:50 a.m."
"Thanks, bye."
"Thank you for calling."
Total elapsed time, maybe 15 seconds.
Now we have automated multi-option telephone systems.
Instead of having a quick in-and-out conversation, you get question and option after question and option, my finger and a recorded voice communicating.
I dialed. A pleasant, recorded voice came on: "Thank you for calling USAir. For flight arrivals and departures, press 1. For domestic reservations within the continental U.S. and Canada, press or say 2 now. For international reservations, press or say 3 now. If calling from a rotary phone or if you would like to speak to a reservations sales agent, please continue to hold."
I pressed 1.
"Please hold while we connect your call." (Short wait.) "Thank you for calling USAir automated flight information system. Please enter the flight number followed by the pound sign. If you do not know the flight number, press the pound sign."
I entered the flight number and tapped the #. But I still wasn't through. There were more options.
"For arrival information, press 1, or for departure information, press 2."
I pressed 1.
"For flight arrival information for Thursday, Nov. 24, press 1. For information for Friday, Nov. 25, press 2. For flight arrival information for any other day, press 9."
I pressed good old 1 again.
"Please hold while your request is being processed." Short pause. Success at last? No more options? No, more options. "For information on flight 321 arriving in Baltimore, Md., press 1, arriving at West Palm Beach, Fla., press 2."
1.
"Flight 321 is scheduled to arrive at Baltimore, Md., at 11:34 a.m. at gate D24."
At last I had it. All it took was five choices and 1 minute, 35 seconds. Only a minute and 20 seconds longer than the old-fashioned way. Of course it was my time that was wasted, not the airline's.
And thanks to what the automated voice had told me, time suddenly became a major problem. The 11:34 arrival time was 16 minutes ahead of schedule. How could the plane be 16 minutes ahead of schedule when it hadn't been in the air for 16 minutes and the flight only lasted an hour? Talk about your hot-shot pilots.
I didn't know. But there was no one to ask, and no time. I suddenly was in a mad race with the plane to get to the airport gate first, with the plane having the better odds.
I zipped into the car, zipped out the drive and zipped over toward BWI. Fortunately, traffic was light, the god of changing lights was distracted and I made it (without going too much over the speed limit) with seven minutes to spare.
Luck also found me a close-in parking spot. I strode purposefully into the terminal and looked at the first arrival monitor I passed to see if there had been any more change in arrival time. Maybe it was now even earlier and I would have to break into an undignified attempt at running.
But the flight wasn't listed. I looked at the scheduled arrival time VTC and at the time the recording finally had given me. I couldn't find 321. I looked again, wasting precious seconds if the plane was already rolling toward its still far-off gate. Nope, I hadn't missed it. 321 wasn't there.
I quickly moved into the D concourse, setting off the hijack warning with my car keys, and finally came to a USAir gate counter. The woman there stopped to answer my question.
"Never look on the airport monitors," she told me. "You should use the USAir monitors. You walked right past one."
My mistake. Sorry. How was I to know? Sorry.
I didn't ask why the general monitor didn't give the information it pretended to give and I didn't want to go backward so I went forward, hoping there would be another USAir monitor.
There was and, as predicted, it listed the flight. Arrival time, 11:50, the original scheduled time. So the mystery of how it could gain 16 minutes in an hour flight faded into nothingness. Computer error. Cancel the panic and sorry about that unneeded mad rush to the airport.
In researching this article, I made an interesting discovery. If you press 2 for tomorrow's arrivals for Flight 321, it is on time, but if you press 1, even long before the plane takes off, it sometimes is expected 16 minutes early.
After I waited for the plane and then greeted my guest, we chatted and walked down to get his luggage.
BWI has a new electronic board that displays which baggage areas are served by which flights. This saves having to walk up and down baggage row looking for the area displaying your flight number.
We waited and chatted and chatted and waited and still the flight number didn't come up. So we moseyed down the line. The individual area electronic boards showed some of the same numbers as the main board and some different ones, too. But not 321.
About a half-hour after the flight landed, with still no sign of 321, my guest went into the USAir baggage office and asked about it.
Oh, he was told, we announced that one on the loudspeaker.
Oh, so why do they have all those electronic boards if only some flights are listed? And what loudspeaker? In an airline baggage area there are so many human loudspeakers that we never heard the electronic one -- I don't mean heard it but didn't understand it, I mean didn't even hear any.
We collected the luggage and drove home in a more leisurely style than I had driven there. If I hadn't been otherwise occupied, I might have reflected that this had been a bad show for Airline X, three things going wrong in a little more than an hour.
Of course airline safety is of paramount importance and today's flying is so safe that it is usually a given. But even in this post-consumerist age, user friendliness is important and Airline X could greatly improve its performance in this area, and set a standard for this industry and others, by tossing its automated phone system out the window at 40,000 feet.
As for the person who invented automated phone systems, he or she should be thrown into a dull, dark dock and forced to make all wordly contacts through automated telephone systems, interrupted every 30 seconds by a voice saying, "Welcome to Bell Atlantic, du du du du."
Myron Beckenstein is assistant foreign editor for The Baltimore Sun.