I could tell when he called me out.
“C’mon, General, I need to see what you see,” pulling his hat on and heading down to the river.
It turns out he and the missus had been trying to rent a film for two nights in a row, and Telstra wouldn’t recognise his PIN, which these days Telstra insists it needs for parental control.
There are no kids in the house, so Telstra must be talking about New Boy.
Anyway, the PIN that always worked before now failed to work, and each time it didn’t work, The Boss hit “Forgot PIN”, which was supposed to send a reset message to his email.
And that didn’t work because it wouldn’t recognise the email and password combination he had used for years. Repeat, many times.
In frustration, he headed upstairs to his computer and went through his Telstra ID, which worked perfectly — but when he used the same details on his mobile in front of the telly, the Telstra ID decided to go on strike, too.
On the second night, after the 10th try, he finally managed to get his mobile working along with his computer.
“And I’d changed nothing, General. Telstra brings in this parental control — for good reasons, I’m sure — and the whole caboodle stops working. You’re locked in. There’s no way to get out of it.”
He persevered, of course, which is a noble thing in a man as well as a dog. Eventually, he and the missus managed to watch Mending the Line, a recent film about a traumatised war veteran coming good after a sustained spell of fly fishing.
I guess he was determined to see it, although the missus didn’t share his enthusiasm for the film — or think much of his stubbornness.
I sensed revenge on his mind the next day when he decided the time had come — get rid of the Telstra landline and fax that he wasn’t using much anymore.
I knew it wasn’t a good idea to engage with Telstra so soon — any dog knows you lie down for a while after a fight — but he went ahead anyway.
This opened a whole new world of frustration that he should have seen coming — he’s a slow learner, as I’ve said before.
I lay down and watched.
He first went online, thinking one of Telstra’s chats might sort it out quickly.
Sure enough, he got on to Mary. He figured she was a bot, or an avatar, or an AI disembodied voice.
She asked him two questions and pushed him towards Ask Crew, who promised unlimited conversations (for only $10 for seven days).
He sent back the obvious question: “Are you asking me to pay you money to cancel a service I don’t want?”
But she didn’t answer.
He tried again, and she did the same thing: subscribe to Ask Crew, or nothing.
Three times.
“Are they trying to drive me insane, General?” he asked, looking at me plaintively.
I nodded, wagging my tail weakly.
He finally rang the Telstra 1300 number, went through the voicemail menu twice, plus the advice to leave his mobile number for call-back, the advice to use their website and the advice to use their chat — which he had just rejected — and hung on gamely for 40 minutes.
He finally found Ash, who was lovely and understood but couldn’t do anything.
Ash checked his details and passed him on to Braden in Perth.
He wanted to ask Braden about the heavy weather coming our way, but he resisted.
Braden said, “Give me 90 seconds,” and came straight back, saying the lines had been terminated and he would send a confirmation by text — no mucking about.
Verging on racking sobs, he cried: “Why aren’t there more Bradens, General?”
Indeed. Woof!
• For more yarns, visit sheppnews.com.au/the-general
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