I’m Not Good on the Phone — or Why Apple Tech Support Never Wants to Talk to Me Again

I’ve been saying I need to blog this story for a several years now (has it really been that long since I’ve blogged…? hm) so buckle up for a wild ride into my daughter’s favorite, most requested story about me ever: “Nice to meet you. Has my mom told you how bad she is on the phone yet?”

I know I’m not the only person with social anxiety specific to talking on the phone to strangers. If it’s someone I know and can picture, we’re all good, but in the absence of expressions and body language, I just can’t grasp what’s happening in the conversation and spend so much energy panicking and apologizing over my poor conversational skills, I make it sooo much worse. Well, I have known this about myself for some time to the extent that I was very up front about my lack of phone skills for a summer college internship as a legal secretary (the lawyer hired me anyway, because his primary goal in hiring an art student for a legal office position was to be able to pay someone $9/hr to build his new website once the $40/hr tech company connected it, so I did some filing, web design, and researching and didn’t answer the phone unless no one else could).

When I ended up marrying an outgoing guy with charisma of level 20, I would implore him to do all the phone calls like check on this with the bank, call this office and move the appointment, and so on. He’d do it, but he always made fun of me for my excuse of “You’re so good on the phone!” He’d be like, “How are you bad on the phone? Do you start to order a pizza and then throw the phone into the wall?” I couldn’t really explain it, but now….

One day, I got a weird email regarding my apple account, which I hadn’t been doing anything with in years as I had switched to Android and turned off the battered iphone 6s that I’d kept well beyond the update that would have bricked it. So I freaked out a little because no one should be doing anything on that account, so I wanted to log in and see what’s up. It had been so long I didn’t remember my password, and I still don’t know why my secret questions didn’t get me in, so I gathered my talking points and information and psyched myself up to call Customer Support.

Only… you can’t call Apple Support — they’ll call you. So I send an IM and sure enough my phone rings. BUT, no matter how I try, it won’t pick up and I get the “Oh, we’re sorry we missed you, we’ll try back shortly.” After two iterations of this my social anxiety has spiked because now of course, they think I’m being rude and not answering and they don’t know that I’m trying to answer. So I remember that I can answer calls on my computer sometimes because Google fi is great so I run into the home office where Garian is working and try to answer through my gmail, but still no luck.

My next move is to frantically find ANY phone number for anything Apple and call it and push buttons until I get a human. I get connected with someone with Apple in God Knows What Department and by now, my thoughts are completely scattered, all rehearsed openings gone, so I blurt out:

“I don’t know if you’re the right person, but tech support was trying to call me and I was TRYING to answer and it kept not picking up and telling me it would call back and I couldn’t even answer on a computer!”

The Patient Tech Guy (PTG) goes, “Um, ok ma’am, and is this the first time you’re experiencing this problem?”

Me: “That’s not what I’m calling about! But you should totally look into it… I got an email about my account and I don’t remember anything and it won’t take my secret questions even though I KNOW what street I grew up on!”

That is perhaps the most ominous opening a customer support rep can receive, but this guy may have not even been Customer Support, I don’t know, so he gamely launches into problem solving for me.

PTG talks me through trying to unlock my account, but we can’t seem to do it, so finally I’m like “I don’t even use this anymore — can I just shut it down so it doesn’t get hacked or anything?” And he jumps at the chance to help me do that and get off this painful call. The catch? He needs the email address associated with the account and I totally know this, but part of it is my first name, which I still know at this point, but it involves a lot of similar sounding letters — but that’s not a problem because I do know the Military Phonetic Alphabet…. normally.

Me: “R as in.. rabbit. E as in egg? B as in boy. E as in Edward? K as in Kangaroo…”

At this point, I’m thinking that isn’t right. What is it? is it Kilo? Kansas? I think it’s Kansas…E is ECHO!

Garian has stopped pretending to work and is watching in horror and fascination as, while I try to remember what K should be, my mouth just kept on talking and I hear myself blithely trot out,

“A as in apotheosis.”

Now my brain is going, CRAP, that’s not right! Pay attention here!!

PTG is just quiet, no doubt taking notes for sharing this around the water cooler later. I snap back into the conversation and pretend nothing happened and prepare to redeem myself with H.

“H as in….”

Half my brain is screaming “Something normal! Anything normal! Anything normal that starts with H!!!“

The other half is like “How long am I taking? Is the pause dragging on? Is he going to think I’m an idiot who can’t think of a word that starts with H and also can’t answer when Tech Support calls?”

So I yell, “…HABERDASHERY! Oh, I am so sorry…”

I put my head on the desk, I’m shaking and sweating, Garian is crying he’s silently laughing so hard, poor PTG is trying not to crack up while he says, “Um no, you don’t have to apologize…”

I ask him to give me a minute and then we soldier on through the rest of my email address, and get the account closed. PTG then assures me that since he definitely does have my email now, he will send me pdfs on anything I may want to do in the future, including undoing the cancellation, or making sure it’s closed, or literally anything, Just please don’t try to talk to us again is the subtext I’m picking up here.

I get off the phone and spin around to Garian and point at him and say “THAT’S what I mean when I say I’m not good on the phone!”

He has never made a fuss about handling the phone calls ever since.