Author: JH

It is weirdly comforting to know that you don’t suffer alone. So I was glad to read this on the Adobe support forums from a veteran poster: “As we all know, you don’t wish Adobe customer service on anyone.”

So, after some seven years as an Adobe customer, here’s the story of my first phone conversation with Adobe customer service, yesterday in the afternoon. I get through after twelve minutes – not bad. The person does not sound crazy and asks for an order number, which I provide. Then – silence. After a couple of minutes I ask what is going on. “Sir, I’m pulling up your information.” Aha. 18 minutes. “I can see your order now, but I need to pull up more information!” Silence. All of a sudden, the person apologizes for some known Adobe problem with the product I ordered. I quickly point out that this is not my problem, and explain what is at issue. Silence again, then: “Please provide me with your phone number in case we get disconnected.” That does not bode well, I think. More silence. 26 minutes. My mind has long started to drift away, I surf the web. I feel like an astronaut, separated from my space ship, floating through a boundless, dark void. At some point I manage to ask: “Is there any progress?” Silence. Then: “Sir, I’m still pulling up more information.” Silence. After no further interaction, in minute 43, we finally get ‘disconnected.’

I don’t expect to be called back. However, now I cannot get rid of this picture in my head of Adobe customer service representatives “pulling up information” – with fishing rods perhaps. Or maybe the information is carved into blocks of stone shaped like large cheese wheels, stored deep down in a Kafkaesque basement. When a call comes in, the stone with your information must be located, and then rolled to the Adobe customer service cave on a higher floor.

To be continued, I assume.

I decided to expand Walk In The Park, which originally began as a project about my perception of Central Park. Then came Paris. The Jardin du Luxembourg made it clear that, where ever in the world I am, I need a garden with its own spirit. This Parisian realization sheds new light on photos I made during several short trips to Munich, in a place that I find almost mystically beautiful. There’s a whole area stretching around one of Munich’s castles, the Schleissheimer Schloss, which has a peculiarly interesting atmosphere. A kind of forest lies between the city and the formal gardens of the castle, and there’s an airstrip nearby that has basically remained untouched since World War II. The forest doesn’t quite reach the confines of the courtly park. In between, there is an array of countryside walks that were planned by a 16th century aristocrat, who liked to wander the same path for prayer and meditation every day. He was a design genius: it is stunningly quiet and strangely special here. Anyway, this shall be the third part of Walk In The Park, after Central Park and Jardin du Luxembourg. I’ll post a first edit soon.

While I was in Paris, the question of how I was going to get away was rather strongly on my mind. But not quite enough so for me not to foresee what would happen: I would miss Jardin du Luxembourg. In the back and forth about booking a rental car or sticking it out for another day, I counted the days in terms of whether I was going to get to the park again or not. I finally left, thinking that it’s always good to have a reason to return to a beautiful place.

The chair series so far: here.