Page 72 Yes, we have no bananas Life after Larry changed a lot, in a lot of ways. Some changes were large, some were small. Funny, one of the major disappointments for many people was the lack of bananas. Innisfail farms had been wiped out and there just wasn’t a banana to be had, despite the plaintive cry of so many mothers that “but my child won’t eat any fruit other than bananas”. They just couldn’t believe that the food preferences of their child wouldn’t somehow, magically, produce a stand of bananas for sale. When bananas started reappearing in the shops they were a premium item and sold out fast. I remember that pre-Larry the Atherton International Club would offer a fruit tray as a raffle prize with a big ripe pineapple as the proud centerpiece of a pyramid of fruit arranged concentrically in neat colourful circles around the pineapple. When post-Larry bananas first started appearing, the AIC fruit tray featured one upright banana as the centerpiece instead of a pineapple, and when I won the raffle AIC staff laughingly offered me an armed escort to transport my much-envied banana and its fruity friends safely to my car in case I got mugged by deprived banana-lovers en route. I could empathise with those mothers who just couldn’t believe that one banana couldn’t be found somewhere, somehow, if only you complained enough, because I felt the same way about our internet connection. Before we shifted to Ravenshoe I had checked and double-checked with Telstra that we would have good internet connection, because that was part of our master plan to work from home. I was assured that Ravenshoe was on the grid, whatever that meant, but what it meant in reality was that connection to internet was dodgy. Some days we had a good connection where Roy and I got our emails without any difficulty, including attachments, and I could send completed work back easily to Townsville offices. Other days, well, life is full of disappointments and our Telstra internet connection was turning out to be one of them, like the lack of bananas. I had thought our internet connections pre-Larry were dodgy, but they were nothing compared to what it was like post-Larry. Funny, because post-Larry I often received calls from Telstra sales people wanting to upgrade me from a landline to some wireless connection. At first I was polite, explaining how we were in a valley and lucky to get intermittent connection on a landline which was dependent on prevailing weather conditions and that we couldn’t get a mobile connection. If you lost your mobile phone at home that was it, your phone was history unless you were lucky enough to stumble over it because you couldn’t get a signal to call the number to find the phone. However, the Telstra salespeople weren’t interested in hearing that their products just wouldn’t work in our valley. They just wanted to get on with their spiel so a lot of time was wasted on useless discussions as the young salesperson was determined to sell me up to their latest upgrade and just not listening. To save time, I changed my telephone manner from helpful to deliberately obstreperous. As soon as I identified the caller as yet another Telstra salesperson I would greet them happily and settle down to enjoy some telephone games. They wanted to upgrade me to wireless, oh, yes please! And I could have a special modem whatsy for just a little more. Please, I’d like that too! Then would I like unlimited connection, which would cost a little more, plus unlimited downloads, also costing more, plus something else, also costing extra, plus - I joyfully accepted everything they joyfully offered to me and then waited for them to realise that they couldn’t connect me to any of their super services because we were in a Telstra dead area. After a while the Telstra salesperson would come back on the line to sadly tell me that I couldn’t have any of their promised goodies because I was in a Telstra dead area, when I’d say “oh, so you haven’t fixed that little problem yet” and we’d end the conversation on mutual “what a pity” commiserations. They couldn’t make their sale; I still couldn’t make a good connection via Telstra. I know that it wasn’t nice of me but by that time I was very peeved with Telstra and their lack of service, particularly from their horrid off-shore call centres. Also, it was quicker and saved a lot of unproductive talk to let the salesperson go check for themselves to find that what they were offering was impossible to connect, rather than trying to get them to listen to my explanations which they constantly misinterpreted as a sales-pitch resistance which they had been trained to overcome with a little persistence. This story is an excerpt from the e-book “Five Acres and a Creek” written by Sue Bagust and available on Smashwords and Amazon https://smashwords/books/view/372182 Photo: My Ravenshoe office was a great working location, except for the dodgy internet
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:55:44 +0000