by Mackenzie O’Guin

This week, we go off script, and you can thank Dr. Himes. Last night at approximately 2 AM, when most sensible people are sleeping, an emotionally fried Mack O’Guin lay amongst a nest of coffee cups and Doritos bags. What was she doing? Scouring the depths of human consciousness to solve India‘s poverty problem using a photo of a telephone pole as a metaphorical device. In this time of mental instability and coffee-induced zeal, none of her SELFISH FRIENDS could bother to ANSWER her CALLS (probably because it was 2 AM), and she could think of one thing to ease the pain: chatting with Netflix Customer Service.

“Mack, that’s ridiculous!”

Yeah, I agree. But that never stopped me. So, with dark(er than usual) circles and virtually no will to live, I hit up the Netflix customer service live chat. It went a little something like this:

Mack: Hey

Christopher: Hello, I am Christopher, how can I help you tonight?

Mack: Well, I actually don’t need any help. It’s 2 AM and I’m working on this essay and I got lonely, so naturally I decided to come talk to the Netflix customer service live chat…

Much to my surprise, Christopher from Netflix didn’t hang up on me; rather, we spoke for quite a while until my mother insisted I attempt sleep (thanks, mom). After having such a positive experience with the live chat last night, I decided to table what I had planned to do and try this instead: see how long I can sustain a conversation with a Netflix customer service employee.

The conversation, which you can see a full transcript of below, has been one of the most pleasant human interactions I have ever experienced. My Netflix live chat partner, Domaine, was one of the most entertaining and interesting people I’ve spoken to. A generally cynical person (please refer back to my prior posts for a taste of some classic M.O’Guin pessimism), I am proud to walk away from this week’s challenge with an extremely positive critique of the world at large. Possibly my favorite aspect of technology is the fact that I, a teenage girl in Kansas City, Missouri, can chat at length with a tech support analyst in Jamaica, whom I most likely would have never met otherwise. Any other night, I might have mustered some profound insight to 21st century connectivity, but all my literary finesse was drained into the Himes essay that started our journey here tonight (thanks, Dr.). What I will say is this: as a high school student, I am generally in somewhat of a cultural fishbowl, despite the ironic surplus of technology around me. Since technology has been normalized through rather useless websites and apps, I easily forget the more useful things it can be utilized for (e.g., exposing myself to people of other cultures and backgrounds). Tonight was an unassuming reminder of that.

TRANSCRIPT

As usual, thank you for reading. Tonight’s post was a little unconventional, but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless. Have a wonderfully stressful, finals-filled week. I love you!

So long and goodnight,

Mackenzie Nicole O’Guin

Special thanks to Stephen Himes for giving me the most difficult essay of my life and prompting this week’s challenge, Netflix for allowing me to harass your employees, and Domaine for such an interesting night.