 |
A leafhopper in a glamorous lady’s hat? Actually, what I’m talking about is the art of bugging people, but very politely. And here I mean not bugging innocent strangers, but politely bugging people whose job is to help you, but who have decided that they really don’t have to help because….well, let me just tell you the story.
We got into Uppsala pretty late Friday night, and the promised Internet connectivity of our hotel room was busted, zero, zilch. |
Next morning, we tried lots of plug-and-unplug-and-restart-and-etc. on both our computers. Nope. So my goal for yesterday, (Saturday, alas) was to solve our Internet problem before Frank came home from the Lepton-Photon Conference.
The front-desk staff was sure (on zero evidence) that my computer had to be the problem. Nothing they could do if my computer was the problem, so very sorry.
I kept my cool, and I also kept politely coming back with new ideas about how my problem might get solved.
Polite, even friendly persistence is the best way I know to turn people-who-don’t-want-to-solve-my-problem into people-who-do-want-to-solve-their-own-problem, which is that I keep turning up, hoping they’re going to help me.
They finally agreed to let me try the connectivity from a different hotel room–and it worked! Then, since nobody knew how fix the cable to our room which was clearly broken, they “gave” us an empty single room just for its Internet.
In one way, this less convenient than having an Ethernet hookup in our own room. But in another way, it’s better, because here I sit typing this all by myself while Frank is peacefully napping down the hall.
Anyway, the Polite Bug is what Julie Kavner in This Is My Life would call a “life lesson” from Sister Age. Just keep on politely bugging the people who are supposed to help you, and even if they weren’t planning to help you….they will.