Directory assistance used to be quite simple: You dialed 411, and a complex informational retrieval and processing system responded. We called them "human beings."
If I remember the dim misty past correctly, the call began with the operator asking you for the listing; there would be an impossibly short pause, and then she'd give you the number. You had to write it down, unless you were one of those people who thought they could remember the sequence by repeating it over and over. If someone walked into the room, the situation unfolded like this:
"OK, 701-493-55 …"
"Hey, whatcha doing?"
"Shh! 719-493-5555. No, that's not — Argh!"
At some point, automation entered the picture. A robot lady prompted you for a name, and then a prerecorded voice said "Harry will be with you in a moment," and then Harry would suddenly appear, sounding as if he was in a room where 1,000 other people were talking. Probably because he was. "Thank you, here's your number."
Why thank me? No, thank you. Then the robot lady came back, told you the number, texted you the number, and dialed the number. What, you're not sending over a plane to skywrite it over my house? What kind of service is this?
That brief moment you spent with Harry always seemed like a quick glimpse of hell —- the calamitous noise on the other end, the vision of a thousand drones with headsets barking "Here's your number" over and over, perhaps fed by protein pellets that popped out of a dispenser every 45 minutes, ruled by a man who roamed up and down the aisles, beating a drum to set the pace of work.
Sometimes there were complications, and Harry really had to work. "Please say your city and state," robot lady said. "Minneapolis, Minnesota." "Please say the name." "Bob Johnson."
Pause.
Somewhere in America, Harry feels his pulse race: This is going to kill the quota. He'd have to talk to you. "Hello, I have 4,392 Bob Johnsons. Do you have a middle name?" "Uh, Throckmorton." "OK, hold for the number."
You could tell by his voice he wished you'd said that before. Might have helped, you know. But sometimes he'd come up dry, and you'd ask if he could check another city in the area. Like it never occurred to Harry. "I have a Robert Throckmorton Johnson in Eden Prairie. Please hold for the number."
Right about now readers of a certain age are shouting "Just use the White Pages, for heaven's sake!" But we don't have one. For a while the White Pages existed only to give some competition to Stephen Hawking's books as "most unread," but now they don't even bother sending them.
Doesn't keep you from getting those small local phone books, though; the other day a man walked through the neighborhood and threw one on everyone's stoop. Pointless. He might as well have put them all in the recycling bin. The company that printed them up should have just fed them to the shredder when they came off the press. The guys who chopped down the trees for the pulp might as well have put the trunks back on the stump and glued them together.
So, we're stuck with robots, but I realized something the other day. I tried to find the number of someone I went to grade school with, to express condolences on her father's death. I had her married name, and the internet had some information about where she lived. If you wanted the number, you'd have to pay them.
If you grew up with free directory assistance, of course you balk: It's like coin-operated drinking fountains. So I dialed 411; the robot lady told me this was a service of AT&T, I told her I should certainly hope so, and she asked for the listing. Pause.
"Sorry," said the voice, with this peculiar intonation you'd use to someone who said "I wake up at night convinced my bed is full of eels." Her tone is sympathetic but remote, like she's backing away a little. "I can't find that listing."
So I said "Operator," the magic word that's supposed to summon Harry or someone Harryesque, brusquely shoving robot lady aside to show what a real person can do.
"Sorry," she said again. "This is an automated system."
They fired all the Harrys. The vast room is empty and silent. I continued to try terms and names, and eventually robot lady said just what you'd want when trying to find a number for a girl you knew 49 years ago: "OK, calling Elk River Cement."
I hung up. Well, we don't hang up anymore. I stabbed the red phone icon. Hard. Oh, such a stabbing it got. What a tiresome situation. How's anyone supposed to find anyone?
Of course, I set our number to unlisted. But that's different.
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
