At the doctor's office recently, I was given a form to complete. Like all forms these days, it had little boxes for me to print my name, address, SIN number, medical number and who they should call if I dropped dead one day in the waiting room.
I printed all the information clearly enough for even the doctor to read, but I refused to put the letters of my name, address and other personal information into those neat little boxes. In fact, I made sure they were anywhere on the line except the little boxes, especially the dates. I refused to give the date of my birth as 1956/09/23, as the form insisted. Instead, I dated it "September 23/56."
I don't care about the form's little boxes, and I don't care if the form designers want the date written with the year first and the month expressed as a number. It's my information and I will fill it out my own way.
You see, as far as the 21st century is concerned, I am a minor curmudgeon and a major pain in the ass. I do whatever I can to remind this digital and impersonal world that I'm not a cog in the system but a wrench in the gears.
I am not rude or inappropriate, even to machines. I am not a political revolutionary trying to replace order with anarchy. But I will assert my individuality in circumstances where I need to remind the world I am not a sheep, for I am a contrarian and these are my rules.
Rule No. 1: Use the system to rebel against The System. I don't care that Canada Post makes millions of dollars by delivering junk mail I don't want. I have a stamp I use for junk mail. It says "Incorrect Addressee Return to Sender COD." Then I pop it all back in the mailbox and Canada Post can deal with it. I didn't ask for the stuff, and giving it back to the people who sent it to me is so much more satisfying than simply burning it. If we all did this, maybe the people who send us the junk mail would get the message that we don't want it.
Rule No. 2: Waste the telemarketers' time. Like chirping birds at the crack of dawn telling me morning has arrived, at the end of the day telemarketers interrupt my peace with their incessant calls. I used to explain to them that I was having dinner with my family and couldn't talk. When that didn't work, I would invite them to call the next day at 11 a.m., when I knew no one would be home. Now I simply say, "Hold on for a second, please," set the phone down and resume dinner with the family, happy in the knowledge that their time is now being wasted, not mine. If we all did this, maybe we'd get through the dinner hour with fewer telemarketing calls and the industry would die like buggy-whip manufacturing.
Rule No. 3: Don't clear your tray. At McDonald's or any other fast-food outlet, people seem to want to do the right thing by clearing their trays from the table when they're finished. Don't do this. You paid for the meal. Why should you clean up for them?
What's next, doing the dishes? The windows? Let them charge a penny more on the fries if they have to and maybe they'll hire homeless people to clear off all the trays at all the McDonald's in the world. I'm not doing their work for them just so they can save millions of dollars and declare a bigger dividend to shareholders. Maybe if we all did this, there'd be fewer people begging on the streets.
Rule No. 4: Some signs are to be ignored. Why do the big hotels have signs on the swinging doors asking you to use the revolving ones? I hate revolving doors. You can never go as fast as you want in them, and you always run the risk of getting stuck or losing a foot. Even the bellmen ignore the signs. If you don't want me using the swinging doors then lock them, but unless you do I will use the door I want.
Rule No. 5: Circumvent the artificial person. I am on the phone with the phone company. One of their employees has taken down my credit card number incorrectly and my Internet access has been disconnected. I call them to complain, and a pleasant-sounding woman asks me all sorts of questions about whether my Internet is up or down, whether it's business or personal, whether it's billing-related or service-related. She asks me to say yes or no, and as much as she is trying to be helpful, she is artificial and part of a voice-recognition program.
In the old days, you could connect to a live operator and avoid the automated receptionist by just hitting zero. But you can't do this any more. They make sure zero doesn't connect anywhere. So I enter 20 seconds of random keys, speak the only three words of Cantonese I know or say, "Agent." This always directs me to a human being. These days, big companies seem to do almost anything to avoid speaking to customers. If all of us simply refused to use the voice-recognition systems, maybe we'd get to speak to a real person faster.
So they can take our credit card numbers down incorrectly.
How I hate the 21st century.
Tony Wilson lives in Vancouver.
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