Like most mobile phones these days, the Nokia 3710 has a radio function and I thought this would be great for tuning into the only two stations I listen to – the Concert Programme and Radio Hauraki. (Surprising, isn’t it?)

No problemo – grab one of the multitude of headphone/earphone sets around the house and Bob’s your uncle. Sadly, Bob was not my uncle, because the standard size 3.5mm plug on all my headphones/earphones was too big for the miniscule 2.5mm socket on the phone. Nokia, you see, want me to spend another 20 bucks buying their headset. Heigh ho!

Now here’s where this story really begins. I find the number for Nokia’s ‘sales and support  centre’  in the White Pages. I ring the 0800 number. I listen to the plethora of recorded options and, in less than a week, come across an option telling me the opening hours of the Nokia sales and support centre in Auckland. Less than a week later, I’ve found an option which will allow me to speak to a human being. 

An extremely pleasant Asian operator asks me how he can help. I tell him I don’t think he can help because my question is about the Nokia sales and support centre in Auckland and I suspect he’s not in Auckland and is unlikely to be familiar with what they have on their shelves.

Nonetheless, he really would like to help. I ask him whether he has the number for the Nokia sales and support centre in Auckland. He regrets that he hasn’t. I ask him whether it’s possible to call the Nokia sales and support centre in Auckland directly. He regrets that it isn’t. But he really would like to know how he can help me. What exactly do I want? I tell him I want to buy a headset for my Nokia 3710.

He brightens. He can help me with that. He will send an email to the centre, asking if they have such a headset in stock. They will email their reply to him. He will contact me with the information. I can then go, or not go to the centre, according to their reply. ‘This is how it is done.’

I say to him, ‘This is absolutely not your fault, but what you have just proposed is totally insane. I’ll go to the “sales and support” centre and take my chances.’

He says, ‘Thank you very much, sir. Have a nice day.’

At the imposing sales and support centre, at the bottom of Khyber Pass Road, the pleasant young woman at the desk finds the headset for me. I ask her whether it’s possible to phone the centre direct. She says no, they don’t have a listing. I don’t bother pointing out that this is insane or that the idea of a ‘sales and support’ centre that can’t be contacted is really a contradiction in terms.

Some of you may remember that I had a similar experience last year trying to find out where in Auckland I could buy the new HP Envy wireless colour printer. The nice young man somewhere in Asia naturally didn’t know the answer and I couldn’t raise anyone at HP in Auckland and wrote a really shitty post about it.

Not long afterwards I was contacted by Bernadette Stevenson from Acumen Republic who, I assume, handle PR for Hewlitt Packard in New Zealand.

Bernadette was great. Turned out the Envy really wasn’t on the shelves yet in New Zealand, but HP would lend me one of their  ‘review units’ till they were. Brilliant.

In the end I had the unit for a couple of months and am happy to report that the Envy is bloody brilliant, especially if you’re an iPad nut  like me.

And no, you suspicious buggers, before you head for the keyboard, I paid full price when I bought one at Noel Leeming in Wairau Park.

None of which changes my firm belief that while having your call centre offshore may save you a lot of money, it also loses you a lot of local good will, not to mention depriving hundreds and possibly thousands of Kiwis of jobs they would do considerably better.  Why? Because they know the local geography, speak the local lingo and are bound to have the phone number of the branch nearest you. It’s not rocket science!

A perky young waitress waited, clearly expecting an answer, perhaps even a happy little conversation. We forced a smile, mumbled something neutral and buried our heads in the menus.

It’s all part of a new and supremely irritating form of exchange where people you’ve never met in your life ask you personal questions, and apparently it’s not acceptable to tell them to mind their own business.

I’ve become inured to trainee hairdressers and shop assistants demanding to know about my day, when I just want them to wash my hair or let me find a pair of jeans in peace.

I’ve learned to keep my cool when telephone cold callers enquire about my health, ‘Hi Judy, it’s Brandi here from XYZ Services-how-are-you-today?’ There’s never a comma in this, by the way. The whole point of these questions is to get in before you ask what they want. After you’ve discussed the state of your day and/or health and moved on to lamenting the weather, it’s harder to tell them to naff off when they move on to the sales pitch.

What’s wrong with this?  Isn’t it all just part of the lubrication that smoothes social intercourse? It’s just a formal exchange:  How’s your day been?/Fine, how about yours? So why does it make me so irrationally annoyed?

Because it’s totally phony, that’s why, and I find it demeaning. A total stranger is demanding personal information, because some idiot’s instructed them to ‘make conversation’ with customers. And these questions demand an answer, an answer of equal phoniness. The truth is that they don’t give a damn – about you, your day, your health or your views on the weather. If you watch the trainee hair-washers, you’ll see the looks of vacant boredom as their clients chat away. Watch the shop assistants and you’ll see the veiled horror if a lonely client actually takes up the conversational offer.

None of this is as banal as a hairdresser I once had who always answered the phone carolling, ‘How can I brighten your day?’  I changed hairdressers, because I couldn’t bring myself to phone for appointments.

I think we should strike back.  When they ask, tell them – in excruciating detail. The monthly statistics meeting, the problems with getting people to pay their bills, the endless hassles with the HR manager, the interesting new stain on the ceiling of your office…

Then when you get a call from someone with a sales pitch and a ‘how-are-you-today?’ run them through your entire medical history. Embellish a little.  And if they’re still on the phone at the end of all that, give them the lowdown on your Uncle Harry’s piles and the details of his operation.  

It might bring their sales career to an abrupt halt, but I’ll guarantee that it’ll brighten your day!

Yes, it’s the annual Good Friday, Easter Sunday shutdown for shopkeepers who don’t want to be turned into criminals for making a living. Under the Shop Trading Act 2008, both days are designated ‘restricted trading days’. Unless a shop is specifically exempted, it’s an offence to open on these days, and law-breakers are liable to a $1,000 fine.

Sounds simple? Well it is, until you start looking at the exemptions. For example,  the owner of a dairy, service station, souvenir shop, duty free store, transport terminal bookstore, chemist shop, takeaway bar, restaurant, cinema, or video-store can stay open on both days.

According to the Labour Department, the rationale for this  is that enterprises dealing in ‘tangible goods’ – things you can buy, take home and keep – can’t stay open, while enterprises not dealing in tangible goods can.

So where does this leave the dairy, service station and transport terminal bookstore? In theory each of these enterprises should not, for example, be able to sell you a newspaper,  magazine or book – a significant disadvantage, one would have thought, for the transport terminal bookstore – since these items can clearly be taken home and kept; but should be able to sell you foodstuffs, which can certainly be taken home, but will not be kept as tangible goods.

But even this is arguable. A tin of Watties baked beans or a Magnum ice cream can be stored in the pantry or freezer for weeks, months and presumably years. Only once they have been eaten can it truly be said that they are no longer ‘tangible’. This is clearly a grey area in the legislation which requires urgent clarification.

You can argue, of course, and the Labour Department does argue,  that any enterprise which can be deemed to provide an ‘essential service’ should be exempt from the legislation. This would allow service stations to sell petrol and oil – people have to get from A to B -  but nothing else, other perhaps than foodstuffs, which we’ve already identified as a grey area.

Here a further complication arises. If the rationale for allowing foodstuffs to be sold is that their sale constitutes an essential service, then only essential foodstuffs should be available for purchase.

The Magnum ice cream, for example, could perhaps only be sold to someone who had just had their tonsils out. A doctor’s certificate would, of course, have to be produced. Even the purchase of staple foods, like bread and rice, would require proof from the prospective buyer, perhaps in the form of an affidavit or  Polaroid photograph, that he or she was completely out of bread or rice, and had no satisfactory substitute in his or her fridge or pantry.

Chemist shops would seem to come under the ‘essential service’ banner, providing they only filled prescriptions for or sold essential medicines. But this is another grey area. While insulin is clearly essential to a type-one diabetic, is Alka Seltzer essential to a person suffering from a self-inflicted hangover. I would have thought not. Here again, the prospective Alka Seltzer buyer should have to produce a doctor’s certificate, affirming that his aching head and upset stomach constituted a medical emergency. Again the legislation clearly requires urgent clarification.

Which brings us to the video-stores, cinemas, restaurants and takeaway bars. None of these enterprises could remotely be considered to constitute an ‘essential service’, though they do appear to be covered by the ‘tangible goods’ provision in the legislation. One does not normally ‘keep’ a rented video, a movie or a meal.

More difficult to understand are the exemptions  for souvenir shops, duty-free stores and transport terminal bookstores. None provide essential services and each could be said not merely to sell, but to specialise in ‘tangible goods’.

This brings us, I believe, to a core principle behind the legislation. The souvenir shop, duty-free store and transport terminal bookstore cater primarily for tourists. And tourists, so far as we Kiwis are concerned, can go to hell in a handcart – though they won’t be able to buy one on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. New Zealand citizens, on the other hand, are constrained to serve God and not Mammon on these days.

So somehow or other we have come to the position that stuffing your face with hamburgers, pizza or KFC, eating and drinking up large in a restaurant,  going to see No Country for Old Men (R16 Graphic Violence) at the flicks, or watching a rented porno, all constitute serving God, while buying plants or tools to tend your garden on Good Friday constitutes serving Mammon.  Though it’s no longer sinful on Easter Sunday.

Well, if I believed in Him at all, I would have thought that, of all of these activities, gardening would be the most pleasing to God.

But it’s all just absolute nonsense, isn’t it?

In the first place, religious belief  has no legitimate role to play in lawmaking. When and whether shops stay open must be solely a matter of industrial law and not of religious observance. Holy days and holidays must not be regarded as synonymous.

But if we are to have undemocratic and retrograde legislation, let it at least be consistent. Let’s not make absolute fools of ourselves by saying that it’s OK to make money renting videos, selling duty free watches and flogging pulp fiction at airports, but not OK to make money by selling someone a lemon tree or a spade to plant it with.

Either ban the lot and make us all wear sackcloth and ashes for two days, or give every trader and every potential customer the right to make up their own mind on what they’ll do at Easter. I’m for the latter. Let’s open the doors. Let’s breathe the fresh air of freedom. Let’s, for heaven’s sake, grow up!