Stuff happens as they say. Especially with the increased frequency of severe weather storms that seem to be coming our way, even in the cozy confines of Portland, OR. It could very well be due to global warming. I’m not a climate scientist so I don’t know for sure, but one can’t deny the increased frequency of severe weather hitting the country, hot and cold.

Last Labor Day the western half of Oregon was on fire. People in cities with tens of thousands of people were evacuating. For a brief moment I packed a suitcase and started taking videos of my belongings incase of an eventual insurance claim. Just after Valentines Day a polar vortex caused a snow and ice storm that took down trees everywhere because of the dense ice accumulation.

When severe weather hits Portland, the city all but shuts down. The buses don’t run, the power is off, the grocery stores don’t have food, anything you had planned to do has been canceled and it’s probably just as well because you can’t drive safely anywhere on sheets of ice. If it were just dry snow, people could adapt. 4WD is no match for a 4″ layer of wet ice on the road. To make matters worse, it’ll get up to 36 degrees the next day, rain like crazy and melt some of the ice, only to be frozen again overnight as a layer thicker than the day before.

All of this inspired me to share my strategy for dealing with another unforeseen consequence of Global Warming: more time chatting with Comcast Support. Notice I didn’t say “on the phone” with Comcast Support. That’s because you can never in your wildest dreams talk to a human being with Comcast Support.

The internet has afforded many of us the opportunity to work from home. I have personally worked from my home office since 2012. It’s been great – except when there’s no power. It’s pretty hard to contribute in a meaningful way when your internet access is cut off. With celular service now, it’s actually possible to get some work done even if the power is off by setting up a hot-spot on the cell phone. But it’s less than ideal. The real challenge is how to figure out how to get ahold of those pesky Comcast Technicians to come out to the house and fix the unique problem I have – a tree branch took down my cable line and cut off both TV and Internet.

Comcast has all sorts of automation informing me of how they are dealing with the outages. I can check my area and see if service is restored. That’s great, but that doesn’t help get my line hooked back up, which is 20 feet up a power pole in close proximity to the power company’s 220v feeder lines. I ain’t climbing up there. Meanwhile I keep getting texts from Comcast saying “We fixed it! We fixed it! Check your service.” I did check my service and I can still see the coax cable coiled up in my driveway. Sorry dudes, it ain’t fixed for me yet.

So 3 days of no work due to no power in the house. That finally gets restored so now it’s time to attack the internet connection issue.

I use the offensive coordinator analogy in my description of the events ahead because experience tells me it’s an absolute necessity to adopt the mindset of a strategic thinker, trying to get past the layers of defense in front of me in search of a victory. Nothing less than a touchdown will suffice.

The first lesson for an offensive coordinator to know when trying to get Comcast Service restored is to understand the defense. The first layer of defense is the infinite phone menu loop with no option to get me in touch with the person I need to talk to – the scheduler. Round and round you go with all sorts of helpful suggestions about how to check the status of your service via their website except um, I can’t reach your website right now because I don’t have internet service. Well, only partially true. I can get spotty access to it via my cell phone with Wireless turned off, but it’s painful and slow.

Back in the good old days – about 5 years ago, you used to be able to penetrate the phone menus by repeating the word “representative” over and over again until the automated system would reply “Alright, let me get you in touch with a representative”, followed by – you’re number 26 in the queue. It might cost me a half hour but at least I could get to a resolution. Not anymore. You can scream “REPRESENTATIVE! REPRESENTATIVE! all day long and you’ll just get asked if you want to hear the main menu options again. So forget about the phone system and talking to a representative, it ain’t happening. Lesson 1: Skip the phone menu.

The second lesson an offensive coordinator needs to know is how to break through the second layer of defense – the chatbots. Comcast has all sorts of chatbots that are basically automated responders that mimic the same options you hear on the phone system, so they are basically useless for what I need. The trick is, when presented with options to chat about “Billing, Tech Support, New Service, or “Other“, choose the “Other” option. The “Other” option led me to the eventually chatting with a real person. Not talking to mind you, chatting, while entering about 10 words per minute with my thumb on my cell phone. Baby steps, but I’m happier at this point because now I can explain that my situation doesn’t fit into one of their predefined scripts.

Over the next hour I chatted/texted with several people who, based on their names were all from India, which isn’t an issue unless you have a non-standard problem — because clearly they are reading and typing from a script. In some ways I prefer typing instead of talking because I have a heckuva time understanding the accents anyway. God bless ’em for doing the needful but I can’t help but register how sub-optimal this experience is.

Before the odyssey was over I was transferred in chat twice, so I had chatted with 3 different departments about my service disruption. 60 minutes into it I felt like I had penetrated the defense and gotten down inside the red zone when I finally achieved a message back from Praveena that “someone from scheduling” would call me back in the next 24 hours and I had a real honest to goodness ticket number! Yay. Almost done.

I was holding my plans for a celebration until I had some actual results because in a previous call I had been given a ticket number and the promise of a call and hadn’t heard anything. At this point, I’m sorry but I’m from Missouri and you’re going to have to show me. Stopping here felt a little like settling for a field goal. Hold my beer, I’m going for the end zone.

That’s when I decided to send in my flee-flicker play and express my dissatisfaction with the process in the hopes of REALLY getting some service around here. And it worked.

Praveena thought she was done with me and asked if I had any additional questions. Yes as a matter of fact I do, Praveena. Could you please see to it that my account is credited for time with no service? I wanted to motivate them in some small way to make my appointment sooner rather than later by letting them know I had no plans of paying for services not rendered. Sure Mr. Toner, I can help you with that. I can refund you for 2 days. Um, but I’ve been down for 5 days and it will be at least 7 days before I have service restored. Are you sure your math is correct?

“The system will only allow me to offer you 2 days because it thinks the outage was 2 days.” Great, but MY outage will be closer to a week. Offer denied. You can either offer me 7 days credit, show up here by Monday or else I call Century Link.

Mr. Toner, I just remembered, I can hook you up with our billing department. They can take care of you. 75 minutes into the experience the next chat representative, Subu from billing, was excited to offer crediting my account with $20 for my inconvenience. Let’s see Subu, I pay $200/month and I’m going to be out for about a fourth of that. My math tells me you’ll need to credit me more like $50.

“I’m sorry but my system will only allow me offer you up to $20.”

Thinks to self: Okay that’s it, Subu, you disappoint me. Century Link coming back into the conversation….

That just won’t do, Subu. Either you fix the billing and I get turned back on by Monday or else I’m going to cancel on Monday and sign up with Century Link — and I won’t be paying beyond Feb. 14th.

Mr. Toner I just realized, I can put you in touch DIRECTLY with the scheduling department. I am so sorry for your inconvenience. 90 minutes into it, I have an appointment scheduled for a real live human being to arrive at my home this coming Monday, 4-6pm. Touchdown. I penetrated the entire defense, got the ball in the end-zone and should be due a healthy credit because there’s a note attached to my account that I’m due 7 days credit.

Climate Change is real and has many negative side effects. Plan accordingly.