Some days I understand little to nothing, and feel like an enemy of humankind.

I'm at work and I'm on the phone with one of the institute's old service providers.  The details aren't important, but we got a nasty second past-due warning — on a credit balance.  So I call to straighten it out.  I get a so-called customer service rep who's kinda snarky, asks for my account number.  I give it to her. 

"And who am I speaking to?" she asks.

So I tell her my name.

"Say your business name!" she barks.  Like I'm the idiot for answering her stupid question.  I mean seriously.   If you want to know what business I'm calling from ask me what business I'm calling from.  If you ask me who you're speaking to I'm going to tell you who you're speaking to.  It really is just that simple.

I dunno.  Seems I'm spending an awful lot of time paying for other people's inability to communicate clearly, a lot of time being snarked at by people because they can't say what they want.  I suspect what they really want is someone to snark at. 

Raving lunatic Antonin Artaud once said: "All true language is incomprehensible."  But when simple directions are incomprehensible, too, you know you've got a problem.  Somebody needs to do something, that's for sure. 

I mean, I sympathize.  It's frustrating to be misunderstood.  And when you don't understand why you're being misunderstood it's even more frustrating.  People take communication for granted.  You string some words together — any old words will do — and something is communicated.  Increasingly the words don't make sense — we're careless with them because a lot of times we could care less about them.  What we really want to communicate is our frustration at being misunderstood, and if we're understood in this, well, it defeats the whole purpose, dunnit?

I am always open to the possibility that it's me.  Communication is, after all, a two-way street.  To be truly incomprehensible, you need not only someone uttering nonsense but someone to be all WTF?  Otherwise it's a little like a tree in the forest.  As frustrating as it is to be misunderstood, it's truly maddening not to be because there's no one around to misunderstand you.

So I'm always asking myself: how can I convince people that I understand that they're misunderstood and that I'm happy to misunderstand them, too, if that will help, yet still get my cup of coffee or pay my bills or get laid without this constant to-do?  There's got to be a way.

I'm thinking about setting up a 1-900 snark-line.  You can call any time of the day or night and just let 'er rip on one of our highly trained snarksperts, who will snark right back atcha — because everyone knows it's no fun to snark at someone who doesn't snark back. Then whenever I got some 'tude from a barista, say, I could just hand her my card, with that handy 1-900 number on it.

"Give us a call," I could tell her, with a sly smile.  "We can help."