Frontier Telephone

Last week I had occasion to call our mighty phone company.
Not our cell phone provider, which is Verizon. But the provider of our local land-line, Frontier Telephone (used to be Rochester Telephone).
Some time ago I cut back our land-line to the barest minimum, which meant dumping the voicemail (a Frontier service).
The intent was to go wireless, but we kept the land-line in case the cable-Internet tanked. Our voicemail was on the cell phones.
But those that call refuse to use cell phones, so land-line calls were going unanswered. We often unplug the land-line — so the phone doesn’t ring at 3 a.m. — and forget to plug it back in.
“Use the cell phone,” we say. “That has the voicemail.”
But “I ain’t usin’ no cell phone. Survived the Depression.... World safe for Democracy...... Bath Fire Tower..... How come your phone ain’t plugged in? Wassa matter? Doncha love me?”
So we needed to reinstitute the voicemail on the land-line.
“Welcome to Frontier; steadfastly marching technology into the twenty-first century.
“Your call may be monitored so we can fire the service-reps that don’t properly tow the company line (‘one ringy-dingy; two ringy-dingies.....’).
“Please enter your seven-digit phone number.”
Well swell; this makes sense. The machine presorts the phone calls or fires up your number on the service-rep’s screen in advance.
“Hi there. My name is Donna. What can I do for you today?”
“Well, since you asked,” I said; “but what I really need is to reinstitute the voicemail on our land-line.”
“Okay, what is your phone number?”
HMMMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNN........
Cue all-knowing brothers who will noisily insist I change my cell phone provider to the one they use.
Uh, yeah; changing cell phone providers is gonna make non-techies use the cell phone voicemail instead of the land-line.