Delight. That's what it was. It took me a moment to identify; I was just so surprised to be offered up a moment of pure happiness on a drear Tuesday morning as I slogged my way through a mundane list of household tasks.
It was akin to having a butterfly land on your rare flowering cactus as you clicked the shutter. It made me break into a goofy grin. I felt I should share this miraculous moment with someone but my husband was out. A text to a friend could not convey the sublime zen I felt; nor is there an emoji that could capture it. I wanted to call my mother with the good news but she is a bit confused at 89 and it would be lost in the explanation. Twice.
So it fell upon a complete stranger to absorb my over-the-top blathering and for that I should probably apologize. But maybe it made her day as well.
The episode in question began when I called our local newspaper to restart the paper after putting it on "vacation hold" for the summer. I had procrastinated because The North Bay Nugget's automated answering service is a special kind of hell designed, I am guessing, by devious millennials tasked with the ultimate corporate goal of eliminating the use of archaic instruments such as landlines--maybe all phones in fact--and newsprint.
As close as I can figure the current business model dictates we should be interacting with our news providers online only: reading it, watching it, paying for it, never putting it on vacation hold. Except the websites have been designed by another set of devious millennials in the Philippines or India who will chat with you online about what you want to do; they will thank you profusely for that information; they will not understand First World problems like the inability to have a newspaper delivered to an island cottage which means the papers will pile up in the driveway for the entire season of summer unless our neighbour clears them away. Even though I had dutifully suffered through the automated system to put it on hold at the beginning of summer.
I probably should not name specific newspapers but I worked for The Nugget back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. There is a special place in my heart for the old rag even if it no longer has much in the way of local content or thoughtful editorials and op-ed pieces. Despite the fact Sun Media Corp insists reporters are an expensive option and editors and proofreaders are an unnecessary luxury, I still subscribe.
So to restart my subscription I called the local number with dread. I had my coffee at hand and my nerves steeled to combat the approaching frustration. It rang once and I thought, Here we go. A voice answered and it took me a full second to realize it was a living breathing woman asking how she could help me. I coughed on my coffee and then could not come up with the words "I would like to take my Nugget off vacation hold". She waited. And then when I did sputter my request, she efficiently said she would transfer me to Circulation. Here we go, I thought again.
But no. Another efficient, real live woman offered to help me. I told her my phone number, address and she said it would restart the next day. "But wait," I gasped. (And here is where the gushing began.) "Can I just say how nice it is to talk to a real human being to transact this?" I could hear her smiling over the line.
"Someone at Sun Media changed something and now the calls come direct to us," she said happily. We said our good-byes under the cloud of probability that someone at head office will discover this breach of business model efficiency and went on about our days. I don't know about the Nugget women I spoke to but the serendipitous pleasantries exchanged made my day better.
And our Nugget was in the box the next morning.
