Please Hold. The Torment of Call Holding

  

 

 

 

Just hold on, I'm comin'

Hold on, I'm comin'

Hold on, I'm comin'

Hold on, I'm comin'

Reach out to me for satisfaction, yeah

Call my name, yeah, for reaction

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah……..Sam and Dave

 

The world record for being placed on “hold” is believed to be 15 hours, 40 minutes and one second.  This was the outcome of a phone call from Australian Andrew Kahn to Qantas Airways according to the Sydney Morning Herald. As a recorded message reassured him, over and over, that a customer service agent would be with him “soon,” he simply stayed on the line. He went on with his life, working, reading, eating, watching TV, sleeping, and, of course, waiting. He told the newspaper, “I wanted to find out what exactly they meant when they said they would be with me as soon as possible.”  Kahn was a notable exception as according to data collected from customer surveys, two-thirds of people said they’re only willing to wait on hold for two minutes or less. And 13% said that there’s no amount of time they’d be okay with waiting on hold. A survey by American Texting firm “Talk To” concluded that 86% of consumers say they’re placed on hold every time they call a business. It’s shocking when a human answers but I wouldn’t know because I’m one of the 86%.

“Hold” even has a definition. Techopedia reports that average time spent in this limbo is the average time it takes for an operator to answer a call. It’s the amount of time a customer waits in the electronic dark matter before getting a response from an agent while being assured that “your call is important to us”. Bonus points if you can understand what the agent is saying when you finally reach the Promised Land. 

 

“I don’t see how he can ever finish, if he doesn’t begin.” ……….The Mock Turtle, Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.  Recently, after returning home to Canadensis from our winter sojourn in Hilton Head, S.C, I was notified that I had a prescription waiting for me back in Hilton Head. Rather than drive back to Hilton Head, I called our local CVS. After giving my date of birth and hearing the robotic “Hello…………John”, and then going through the menu with the recorded computer voice; “do you want to renew a prescription? Press 1 for yes or 2 for no”, “you have a prescription waiting for you”,………”no”, said I, “I would like to speak with a pharmacist”. In response I heard, “For all Covid 19 related questions including test kits press 9”.  No, “I would like to speak with a pharmacist”. “Push 2 to speak with a pharmacist”.  I pushed 2.  “For all Covid 19 related questions including test kits press 9”.  Note, if you just say “pharmacist, pharmacist, pharmacist” over and over, you may, eventually, hear, “I can’t understand you, would you like to speak with a pharmacist? Press 1 for yes.  I pressed 1.  “For all Covid 19 related questions including test kits press 9”.  Around three calls and the accompanying Covid 19 Test Kit offers later, and then waiting through a musical presentation interrupted by CVS commercials, I got an actual human pharmacist on the line.  She was very helpful and said she would call the Hilton Head CVS to arrange for the prescription transfer.  Two days later, having heard nothing, I called CVS again. “Pharmacist, pharmacist, pharmacist” I yelled.  “For all Covid 19 related questions including test kits press 9” I was told. I finally go through and the pharmacist, informed me that they had been calling the Hilton Head CVS, but they couldn’t get a live human being on the phone! I’m sure they had lots of information about Covid 19 test kits though.  I found the dueling machine calls of the same corporate entity battling it out to be a delicious irony, but it took a week of trying before I could get my prescription transferred up north. I could have gone back to Hilton Head and picked up the prescription and returned home in less time. 

 

In order to be placed “on hold”, you should have a telephone and so we go back to 1876 when Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for what he called “Improvement in Telegraphy".  This established the principle of the telephone. He called his first one the “electrical speech machine”.  Bell and another inventor, Eisha Gray, had been working independently on the invention.  Their rather frantic work pace was so close that they actually got to the patent office on the same day. Bell got there before Gray, he hid behind a door and tripped Gray as he walked in, and then he tied his shoelaces together, and then he switched door signs so that Gray went into the Ladies Bathroom instead of the patent office.   Gray, not happy with this turn of events, sued. Bell won……that’s history.  That’s also not the whole story.   Both Bell and Gray had filed on February 14, but Bell filed a patent application, with the claim that stated “I have invented. “Gray, on the other hand, filed a caveat, a document used at the time to claim “I am working on inventing. “.  Priority, in American patent law, follows date of invention, not date of filing. So that, and filing and tripping Gray as he came in the door, helped Bell avoid an even more costly and time-consuming kerfuffle. The U.S. Patent Office issued patent #174,465 to Bell on March 7, 1876.  But wait.  There’s more.  Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci may have beaten them all to it in 1860. Unfortunately, after being injured during an explosion on the Staten Island Ferry, evidently combustible ferries were a problem in those days, his wife sold his prototype telephone and equipment to pay his medical bills. Later, Meucci took his notebooks with all his experiments and a new prototype of telephone to Western Union telegraph company, but their executives (some were friends and colleagues of Bell) failed to meet with him and later claimed to have lost the items he had given them. Two years later Bell filed a patent and set up a company with Western Union.

 

Once telephone use spread to the general populace, there were too many calls and not enough operators to answer them. Operators at telephone exchanges were overwhelmingly women. They were deemed to be “friendlier” than men. However, this was before the current day, “Steve from Mumbai” at technical support.  “How can I help you today Mr. John?”

 

Milton H. Herzman was working for New York Telephone, an office with, yes, numerous telephones. Although the phones had multiple lines, you had to disconnect each of these lines before a second call could be answered. Oy gevalt! Herzman used his background knowledge in radio, communications, and electronics to come up with a solution to the problem, a working model of the on-hold button.   This phenomenon was successfully incorporated into the Western Electric Series E phone, patented in 1930. But there was a more elemental problem with the “silent hold”: There was no way to know if anyone was still actually “on the line.”  What goes on while you’re on silent hold? Is the operator sitting there in a recliner chair, puffing on a Marlboro, hair in curlers while wearing a ratty pink bathrobe and sporting fuzzy purple mules waiting for the commercial break on Judge Judy to answer the phone? If your call has been directed to another country for “technical support”, your operator may be out watering the elephants while you’re on hold. The Sounds of Silence and the Silent Hold era lasted for over 30 years

 

Then we come to 1962, and Alfred Levy of Oyster Bay, NY, filed for a patent for a “telephone hold program system.” Noting that phone services could have more than one incoming call, Levy developed a way to keep one caller occupied while the needs of the other was addressed. Levy, per his patent filing, correctly understood the frustration of the caller whose intended audience was busy with others: “His exasperation many times is heightened by a switchboard operator who, if harassed by a great number of incoming calls, gives short shrift to any caller before transferring the caller to a holding circuit. Such a busy operator frequently will simply acknowledge the call and then immediately say that the desired party or the desired line is busy and that the caller should hold for a moment.  Listening to a completely unresponsive instrument is tedious and calls often are abandoned altogether or remade which leads to annoyance and a waste of time and money.” And this was 1962!  How did Levy come up with the idea in the first place? Serendipity.  Levy owned a factory outside New York City, probably Oyster Bay.  Levy’s factory had a problem with its phone service. Apparently, a loose wire was touching a steel girder. The steel acted as an antenna, picking up the signal from a local radio station. The wire tapped into the audio, relaying the station’s broadcast to anyone who was on hold — which Levy only found out when callers informed him of what he thought would be a problem. But to his surprise, callers were pleased by the distraction — they weren’t bothered by the music at all.  Levy decided to turn this anomaly into a feature, filed his patent, and all these years later, aren’t we thrilled with muzak versions of Beatles’ songs while waiting to talk to our cable companies?  Levy’s Telephone Hold Program System, United States Patent 3246082 would connect the incoming call to a source of program material, e.g. music, thereby to “pacify the originator of the call if the delay becomes unduly long, and also to while away the idle time of the caller who is awaiting connection to a certain party or extension.”  Helpfully, he added the hold key which would connect a musical or other program channel to the line. So, Levy’s solution was to add music to the mix. It was a revolutionary idea and Levy was granted his patent in 1966, 

 

“I definitely think hold music has a negative effect on mental health. I argue the main torture results from repetition “– Dean Olsher

 

Twenty years after his first patent related to this issue, Levy filed a second with fellow inventor Jon D. Paul, of San Francisco, for a technology that allowed callers to decide which hold music they wanted to listen to. Patent number: 4577067 -granted 1986. 

 

Eventually, a rival to music arrived—so-called “messaging on hold.” Why simply play canned music to listeners when you could promote your business or provide people with repeated Covid 19 test kit information and really annoy people? In the mid-1980s, companies began mixing music with messages; companies like American Telephone Tapes (yes, the acronym is ATT) adopted “sultry voice” announcers who would break into the music “every 40 seconds or so.” The stereotypical hold music is an insipid instrumental track, aka musical wallpaper, was pioneered by the Muzak company beginning in the 1930s. It offered instrumental versions of popular songs, albeit recorded by major band leaders of the day.  The brand name Muzak became a noun with negative connotations. Ya think? The company went bankrupt in 2009 and was acquired by Mood Media, who ditched the Muzak name forever. The lingering curse of Muzak, like politicians, cockroaches and reality television shows is indestructible. 

 

When your call is placed on hold, the caller is parked, we’ll refer to it as “Hold Purgatory “and you are unable to communicate with the person on the other end of the line and on comes music or a pre-recorded commercial message “hear about our Covid 19 test kit”, for your aural enjoyment. 

 

Today, it is taken as an article of faith by business cognoscenti that “silent hold” is commercial death. You probably cannot remember the last time you had a telephone wait unaccompanied by something. Calls to Apple result in choice of music or silence, I always choose silence and put the phone on speaker, volume up, next to my desktop and type away.  After 15 minutes, usually forgetting I’m on hold, someone comes on the line at maximum volume scaring the daylights out of me.

 

“Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line until your call is no longer important to you” …….Mike Baldwin

 

The Bizzarro world of on hold music and messaging even has its own award. The MARCE Awards (formerly known as The Holdies and which stands for MARketing & Creative Excellence) is an annual competition held by the Experience Marketing Association. Winners have included Best Branding/Best of Show by Italian Street Kitchen, an Australian restaurant chain, which features a folky accordion track, ambient street noise, and an Italian-accented voiceover telling the caller “we will be with you presto.” And Pit Stop Portables’ ‘” The Adventures of Peyton Pitstop and his team of clean-cut superheroes”.  We believe the award ceremony is held electronically with attendees calling in to see if they won and being placed on hold while listening to Lawrence Welk’s “Beer Barrel Polka” on a continuous loop. 

 

As for the latest innovation, that of having them call you back?  For some reason, we cannot imagine why, customers do not trust the company or entity to call them back. There has even been an academic study of this.  Seyed Emadi and Vinayak Deshpande, operations professors at UNC used data from a U.S.-based bank’s call center to produce an empirical study of caller behavior with a callback option. “I was thinking callbacks would be extremely popular; that’s not the case,” says Emadi. “Even though the discomfort waiting offline is much less than being tethered to the phone. That was really surprising.” 

 

Despite an avalanche of technological breakthroughs, the technique and format of on-hold programs has not changed much since the 1980s. The basic idea is to keep callers calm, entertained, and interested, thus preventing them from hanging up. Yup, that sure works well. 

As the old joke goes, I was on hold with the IRS when an automated voice said, "Please don't hang up. Your call is important to us." 

 

No one calls customer service to chat. In most cases, people call to report a problem or request assistance—it’s time taken out of a busy day.  It’s minutes out of your life that you will not get back. Not surprisingly, sometimes callers are already in a bad mood, then the caller experience makes things worse. When you call most customer service centers it becomes clear that businesses still have a lot to learn about providing a positive holding experience – positive holding experience, is that an oxymoron? -  for their callers because it’s still an endurance test of patience, fortitude and frequently, technological expertise. 

Don't hang up (no no)

Oh don't you do it now, don’t hang up (No No)

Don't hang up like you always do…….The Orlons

A favorite experience involves waiting, at length, on hold and finding that the department and human you finally get through to is THE WRONG DEPARTMENT. “Let me transfer your call to sales” says the perky operator.  Just as you’re yelling “no, but!”, there are several clicks and then beep beep beep beep.  Yes, it’s the dreaded beeps of the disconnected call, you stare in futility at the now useless phone in your hand. You:

A. Sigh deeply and start over again. 

B. Curse sincerely (choice of words and volume is optional)

C. Hurl the phone at something. 

D. Get on with your life and try again later. 

E. All of the above 

One is reminded of Sisyphus, that Greek king condemned by the gods to roll a rock up to the top of a mountain, only to have the rock roll back down to the bottom every time he reaches the top. The Existentialist author/philosopher, Albert Camus proposed that an eternity of futile labor is a terrible punishment. And this was before telephone holds. 

It may be time to rethink the whole hold strategy as they’re currently experiencing “unusually high call volumes”, just like every other time we’ve called.

 

“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” ………. Estragon, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. 

 

 

Meet the Author Day at the Local Library

 

 

 

Author:  the writer of a literary work (such as a book)

: one that originates or creates something…………………Definition - Miriam Webster Dictionary

 

While composing this essay, I found it difficult to read my notes because of the water but more on that later. 

 

In early April I accepted an invitation to participate in a “Local Author Meet and Greet” at our area library on May 20.  Author? Moi?  Well, I guess I am an author, but it sounds strange.

I filled out some forms, submitted them via email and that was it. On May 19 I received a call from Mary Ann, the  librarian, asking me to arrive between 12 and 12:45. I arrived at 12:10 for the 1p.m. to 4 p.m. session.  Much to my disappointment, there were no tents outside the library for people who had camped all night to be first in and get a signed copy of my book, nor were there any lines of people extending into the parking lot.  There were no lines and all.  In fact, there were no people. The parking lots were empty but for three cars: the librarian’s, mine and one other. I knew there would be more cars because there would be six authors.  Yes, the joy of six. 

 

Earlier that morning I felt a minor itch on my face. Absentmindedly, I scratched it. Post scratch I thought, “oy vey, could it be a mosquito bite?”  It wasn’t a mosquito bite.  It was two mosquito bites.  Big ones. They were right next to each other on my chin so from a distance, say one foot or so, they looked like one enormous zit.  I looked and felt like a 16-year-old on the morning of the Junior Prom, only now I had to go face the public with an itchy face.  

 

First thing to do was set up my table display. Each six ft long table had three chairs, one for the local author and two on the opposite side for the visitors.  I’m sure had people known that there were only two chairs per table there would have been those lines outside waiting to get in.  It could have looked like Walmart opening the doors on Black Friday.  I had brought  six copies of The Man With Three Arms and Other Stories, single copies of the March, April, May, and June Gnus Almanacs (with each running to 700 plus pages, they are a bit heavy), 10 copies each of the essays, “Scientists Review the Gnus Almanacs” and “Praise for The Man With Three Arms”….., 10 single pages of my website and blog site ( 72 font), for people to take with them, my laptop and a bag of corks . This being my first Meet the Author day, without being too obvious I cast surreptitious glances at the tables of the other authors for hints on how to set up my table for the optimum visitor experience. Some had books stands, there was one with a cardboard box, and everyone had multiple copies of their books. 

 

The laptop was set for my blog, Bloggish Blether, so visitors could see a sample of my recent essay, Ghost Writers in the Sky, which examines the phenomenon of dead authors continuing to produce books after becoming deceased. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the sleep time on the laptop and after every 10 minutes it went into screen saver mode and people would see my screen saver picture of the liverwurst hero sandwich I had last summer.  It is a view of an open sandwich with the Boars Head liverwurst on one side and my artistic splashes of Gray Poupon mustard on the other side.  There are two spears of Boars Head kosher dill pickles next to the sandwich and a bottle of orange soda, because orange soda should be paired with liverwurst to complete the culinary and photographic masterpiece.   Since the laptop was facing outwards towards the audience and I was behind it, I was unaware of liverwurst display screen saving mode activation until about 30 minutes into the session.  A gentleman asked me the meaning of the picture on my laptop. Whoops!  I had to get up and walk around to the front of the table put in my password and log myself in again.  Rinse and repeat several times as I kept neglecting to keep the screen active until I just shut the thing off and put the laptop away. I was the only one with a laptop anyway, probably the only one who likes liverwurst.  Suffice to say, the laptop failed to enhance the table browsing experience. The “review” essays were up front in the middle of the table and the corks were on the left.   Why corks? You may ask. This former science teacher trainer always brought an “interactive activity” to every presentation, and I thought this would make for an interesting experience for visitors.  The cork drop activity is based on Archimedes’ center of gravity principle.  One holds the cork horizontally above a flat surface and drops it.  The object is to have the cork land on an end. I provided a demonstration sheet taped to the table with Margaret’s hand showing the position of the cork pre drop. That took up a bit of space and so the table was crowded with materials even without the laptop. 

The other authors included the head of the local historical society who has written historical novels based on “real life incidents”, a gentleman promoting his book  of “dark, violent teenage angst” (he was the one with the cardboard box of books), a husband and wife with their books Birds of Pennsylvania and Birds of Vermont,  the co-author of Real Time Parenting, a guide to parenting,  and a popular local author, but I never got a closeup look at her display. The “dark violent “guy was an unabashed salesman, giving out books on said teenage girl angst advising that they were “dark and violent”. He repeated it quite a few times. Evidently, he needed some number of reviews in Amazon to achieve some algorithm that was unclear, but we were advised that all his reviews were 4 and 5 star so we presume there is an audience for “dark and violent” teenage girl angst. We all got a book.  I put mine in my box behind the table. The bird people had a large fold out pop-up bird book with bird calls as their centerpiece.  It was a jungle motif although I’m not sure how that fit in with Birds of Pennsylvania and Vermont. We were treated to a cacophony of chirps, chips, buzzes, tweets and caws while I looked around for Tarzan and Cheetah to arrive. Mercifully, while keeping the book open, they turned off the hooting and screeching. 

 

If you’ve ever seen a job fair, there was a resemblance to a job fair.  We all sat behind our tables and visitors sat on chairs (two were provided) in the front of the table facing us as if we were conducting interviews. Turnout was, shall we say, underwhelming.  25 people over three hours. By 2:00 I was bored. My notes say, “please make it end”. I eventually I realized that everyone, including me, had the same spiel when a new person came to the table, so I heard, “based on a real life duel”, “there are several kinds of hummingbirds”, “dark and violent”, and “see the child in front of you” quite a few times.  Just like the other authors heard “hold the cork like this…..” fairly often. 

 

The Cork Challenge was a bit of a success. The corks were attention grabbers.   Everyone who visited my display was instructed to give it a try. I would hold up the bag of corks and say “we went out to dinner last night and got these”.  This got me some strange looks. I also gave everyone a free hint for success.  Our friend Karen came by.  After a dozen or so tries and fails, she accused me of having defective corks, bid farewell for the time being and went to visit other authors before returning, determined to succeed.  Success!  The prize for dropping the cork correctly was that you get to keep the cork. Some people did but Karen said she already had plenty of corks at home and turned down the fabulous prize. Mary Ann, the librarian had a few tries before we opened to the public but, alas, failed.  She came back about an hour later, sat down, and said, “I’m going to get this” and so she did although she also turned down the prized of a free cork. 

 

You may recall the list of items I had carefully and thoughtfully placed on display.  There was also a glass of water which had been added during one of my moments of boredom.  Note that it was during another of those moments that I decided to turn the experience into an essay. I got to get up, walk across the room, fill the glass at the refreshment table and then walk back. Yes, it was that tedious at times. 

 

During one break between visitors, I visited the author at the next table.  She had co-written a book on parenting. We discussed parenting and, in my case, grandparenting.  It was quite interesting, and she gave me a copy of her book which can be a very effective tool for parents and I’ll give it to my son and daughter in law for grandson advice.  I gave her a copy of The Man With Three Arms……. and went back to my table, straightened out some handouts and knocked over my full glass of water.  There was a lot of water.  There was a lot of table for it to cover and it was doing its best.  Embarrassing? Yes, but apparently no one had noticed so I pretended it never happened.  However, it did happen and like the rising waters of a river flooding over its banks after a heavy rain, the liquid slowly oozed across the table from left (my “review handouts”), past my notes, below my book samples, thank goodness and inexorably towards my computer at the other end.  I was doing well at pretending nothing happened, I think, and nonchalantly, but quickly crossed the room and grabbed 2 handfuls of napkins from the refreshment table – cookies, bags of popcorn, and apple juice - and brought them back for H2O containment.  I was surprised had how much water was lapping against one of my folders and how many napkins it took to restore order. It required a second nonchalant trip across the room. The laptop and books were saved but I evidently missed a couple of spots and so when our friend Jan arrived shortly afterwards, she showed me a copy of an article I had written for this month’s Village View, “Decoration Day = Memorial Day.” I announced I would sign it and placed it on the table………….in one of the remaining puddles.  She quickly, but not quickly enough, grabbed the now sodden paper exclaiming “look, the ink is running”.  “Just like the water”, I thought.  I apologized profusely and told her I would get another copy of the article since I knew the author. By now page one of my pages of notes to write this essay was also a victim of the flood and one large mushy blur as were several website pages.

 

There are three rules for writing the book. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” W. Somerset Maugham……………

 

My handouts included “Reviews of “Man………” by such notables as Homer, Shakespeare, Dickenson and Hemingway among others. Hemingway said “it’s better than dying…….alone in the rain”.  There were also copies of Scientists Review The Gnus   which included such notables as Galileo, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and several others including Hemingway, even though he wasn’t a scientist, just because I like the rain quote. Everyone who came to the table got a copy.  I gave one to a friend who purchased my book a few months ago.  She perused the “Reviews” sheets but clearly not carefully and said, “where’s my name?” among the reviewers.  It wasn’t on the list of reviewers. Another friend asked her to read more vigilantly, and she was no longer concerned when she read the complete list again.  She kept her copy.

Our friends, Jerry and Marie, Bill and Kelley, and Jan and Rich came and went. I thanked them all for coming down the mountain into town. All had been to lunch first, so I wasn’t the top priority of their afternoon.  Jerry said he and Marie had been at First Place diner for lunch and he had a Cuban sandwich. I wondered if the Cuban objected. After this they were going to the local garden center “to get dirt” according to Jerry.  Thinking of priorities, I thanked him for placing me below the Cuban sandwich and above the dirt in their afternoon schedule.

 

It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”—Jack Kerouac,

 

Karen, thrilled with her cork drop success, purchased a book for her friend which I, of course, inscribed which was when I learned that my Sharpie was medium point, not fine point so the inscription looked a bit thick and blurry.  I had brought the Sharpie because I had read somewhere that authors use Sharpies to sign their books.  This may or may not be true but don’t use a medium point if you do. I signed a the newest edition of Man…….for Kelley who had been the first to purchase the first edition of The Man ………. My inscription read, “This One is Better. “.  I sold and signed a book to visitors Dave and Candi.  I spelled Candy with a y and she was shaking her head as I looked up and said, “you got it wrong, it should be an i”.  I apologized. She said it was “O.K”.  I said, “no it isn’t” and crossed out the y at the end of her name, wrote “I” and then penned “it should have been an i” and signed my name. 

Several visitors asked where Margaret was.  As I left home, she had informed me that she could spend the afternoon cooking – she prepares delicious meals that we can eat over a period of weeks - or come down to visit me. This was her subtle way of telling me she wasn’t coming. 

The choice was easy.

By 3:30 it was just five of us authors, the “dark, violent” guy had left around 2:30, and so we were enjoying exchanging anecdotes and ISBN number stories. The local Fire Department was having a fund-raising Chicken BBQ that afternoon and we began to wonder if perhaps our low turnout could be attributed to people preferring BBQ chicken to books.  Then we wondered if there would be anymore chicken left when we were done at 4:00.  I tried to reassure everyone that they had an ample supply of gerbils if they ran out of chicken.  I got some strange looks and they were not reassured.  Just when we thought “that’s it” for the session, the head, Chair? President? Grand Poobah? Of the Library board showed up and so we all had to repeat our spiels ……..“based on a real life duel”, “there are several kinds of hummingbirds”, “dark and violent”, and “see the child in front of you” one more time even though she was not going to purchase anything.  I was 2^nd to last as she worked her way around the room counterclockwise, and she probably wanted to get to the Chicken BBQ before they broke out the gerbils. She stood there nodding at my “daily events over the last 2,000 years or so”. She was interested in the corks, however.  Everyone was interested in the corks. While she was busy with a halfhearted try at the cork, I noticed a few soggy napkins on the table which disintegrated when I tried to pick them up and landed on Scientists Review the Gnus. No one noticed. As it was now time to pack up and leave, I used them to wipe off the table when my books were back in the carrying box.  

 

All my handouts were handed out, other than the victims of the water glass deluge.  I still had almost all the corks although one woman took three.  Sitting around for three hours or so can be wearing and so at 4:00, tired but relieved that it was over, all of us authors said how nice it was to meet each other and then said our goodbyes. I drove home and completely forgot to go to the Chicken BBQ. I understand they did well.

 

Reading your stories is like talking to you……………..reader to John Cafarella.