I am a native of Chicago, and I have lived in Europe for the past 15 years. Once a year I come back to visit relatives and to see what’s new in my hometown. This year I have discovered two new things, neither of which do credit to Chicago or to America.
The first is the deplorable deterioration in the quality of the Red Line on the Chicago Transit Authority. During this trip, I made a side trip to Michigan; it took 2.5 hours to get from Kalamazoo to Chicago on Amtrak, and then one full hour to get from Monroe Street to Howard Street on the Red Line–at 10:30 on a Saturday night. Repeatedly we stopped and were told that “we’re waiting for signals.”
From whom? God?
Terrible!
The worst, however, is something new in the wonderful world of telemarketing. You pick up the phone and on the other end there is a voice recording: “Please do not hang up,” one told me just before I hung up.
The absolute apex of this shamelessness, however, was another call. I picked up and heard a recorded voice say, “We’re sorry, all of our operators are busy at this time. Please hold for . . . ,” and then I hung up.
Congress must outlaw this egregious behavior on the part of advertisers. For shame on anyone who does it. For shame on the telecommunications companies that permit it.
I love Chicago, I love my native country, but sheesh.
