Log of a night of calling Thermador, because the oven is beeping and will not stop.

I know what the problem is: circuit board has some fatal flaw. This happened before, and I replaced it. Not cheap. I am not doing that again, because the oven is old, and the ventilation system, the Cook ’n’ Vent or something, is showing its age. The oven no longer heats past 320, which is probably connected to the circuit board, but possibly the element’s bad. I have a new stove on order, which is a different story. What I want to know is how to stop the beeping.

Previously, I turned the breaker off, waited, turned the breaker on, and that did it. This does not work anymore. It keeps beeping. It will not shut up. Its there some combination of keys I can press to turn it off? Perhaps they will know.

Call one: thank you for calling. We are receiving record inquiries because of the pandemic. Please be patient while we work to bring our response time up to our high standards.

After ten minutes, I use the call-back option. They call back in 15 minutes. I am placed on hold. The music consists of the same 16 bars of light jazz, something you’d hear on the cruise ship closed-circuit channel where they advertise jewelry. After three minutes on hold, I am disconnected.

What?

Well, let’s try this again. I enter all the information, and am assured I will get a call back in 25 - 49 minutes. I get a call back after 35 minutes. This time there’s no hold music. There’s no one on the other end. Then the phone goes BEE BEE BEE to indicate the call has been disconnected.

Well. Now I need to speak to a manager, at the very least. I call again. “Your hold time is 10 minutes.” Fine. I have to change earbuds because they run out of power after 35 minutes. After thirty-seven minutes, the hold music stops; there is silence.

BEE BEE BEE

Okay. Someone is going to have to pay. I call again. I put my number in for a callback. I get the call after 25 minutes. Nice lady. I explain my situation, and she says she doesn’t have any information beyond resetting the circuit breakers. Well, I had to check! By the way, might I speak to a supervisor about my attempts to contact Thermidor tonight? It’s nothing you’ve done, you’ve been very helpful.

Sure! But first we have to create a ticket, because this constitutes ESCALATION.

In a way, this is annoying, but on the other hand, it creates a paper trail and a case number. She wants to know what it’s about, and I tell her about the two disconnects, and the 35 minute hold time culminating in disconnection.

“Oh gosh,” she says. “That’s really bad.” She starts to write it up, but gets confused on a few particulars, and I say “tell you what, clear the field, I’ll dictate.”

“Oh good, I used to do 130 words per minute!” We’re a team now. I tell her what to say, speaking all the punctuation, she reads it back. We have created a ticket together and we’re both happy with it!

“I’ll connect you now with a manager,” she says.

Hold music.

Then no hold music.

Silence.

BEE BEE BEE

I can only imagine her mortification to discover that she’d sent me into the netherworld. No, I don’t think it was purposeful; we’d had a nice talk, and I am never angry with the people who do this job. They didn’t cause the problem and no doubt take a lot of flak and guff from people who believe that they personally designed the stove and cast a vote to skimp on hinge oil.

I call back. Ten minute hold, the voice says. Back to the hold music. I know it by heart now and can sing along. If I felt like singing. I feel like killing, but that is not inconsistent with feeling like singing, I suppose. Has to be a German word for it. Kreigsongspieler!

I am now in full Ahab mode. The original purpose of the call is long forgotten. This is about getting to someone whose job it is to listen to me explain what the customer experience is like, so I can gauge his or her character by the response. Will they be sincere? Will they manufacture some simulacrum of sympathy?

UPDATE: After 35 minutes on hold, I got another guy, and attempted to escalate. He was curious what my original problem was, and asked what I had. Circa-2000 Cook 'n' Vent.

"Ah, okay, let me see," he said. "I love this stuff."

That's what you want to hear.

After poking through the manuals, he had a suggestion: check to see if one of the buttons was stuck, because that would trigger an ongoing F-1 Beep.

Sure enough. I used a pin to pull out the button, and turned hte power on. No beep.

So it was, in a sense, all worth it.

I guess.

A book of tips on hosting a perfect Halloween Party.

They’re mostly about finding someone to boink.

Mmm, chewed string with raisin.

YOU WILL MARRY A CRUDE APPROXIMATION OF A HUMAN

Omen objects:

Prepare yourself.

So you’ll be married to a faithless guy who’s rarely home, dropped in different populations, or destined for literary spinsterhood.

This . . . this just isn’t going to happen.

Unless the fork weighs two pounds and the apples are quite rotten.

Oh they’ll be falling over each other to play TICKTACKTOO

It goes on like that for 30 pages. I wonder how many of the suggestions were ever followed.

It’s still 1929. It’s the last week of the year of the Crash that ushered in the Depression. If indeed one was a direct consequence of the other.

Big story is not the crash. It’s the Hamilton trial.

		Hey, whew! It rallied.

Real gripping insider pix:

The Hamilton case, as far as I can gather, went like this.

Hamilton was a lawyer, accused of murdering his son-in-law. Testimony of the son-in-law’s acquaintances paint a picture of a dissolute liar who bragged of being part of Al Capone’s gang. I gather the father had tried to edge the son-in-law out of the picture, since he didn’t approve of their “secret” marriage.

According to his testimony, Walton - the son-in-law - entered the law office with his hand in his coat, as if he had a gun; Hamilton, having heard of the threats, went for the pistol he carried in his coat on a rack. They struggled over the gun, and Hamilton shot several times. He was acquitted early in November, and the news wasn’t the top headline. There was another high-profile murder by then, and stock worries. Up! Down! Up! Down!

Another crime, and for my money far more interesting:

		Smilin’ Frank got himself plugged but good:
		Hmm. There was a Hannah M Brigance, aged 18, who was born in Waco. Don’t you just wonder.

ANOTHER ANCIENT PREJUDICE

This one as old as time itself, the fear that machines would replace men.

ANCIENT, I tells you

		Everything about Bingham brings up a Civil-war era painter and politician, so that's not it. The market for homespun humor was insatiable.

It's been a pleasure to find more Webbys, hasn't it?

From this we may infer it was considered “funny” to add “and a cup of coffee” to any list someone’d said. Now and then you had the fellow who did not know when to stop.

Hence the tragedy.

		That will  have to do. Head back to the 50s now, if you like. Double the number of updates, or I'll never get this thing done in year.