BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

The woman sat behind her desk, her face buried in the computer screen, busily scanning, clicking, and shuffling her mouse in one direction and then another–you know with that pounding and scraping sound you make when you’re not happy with what you’re seeing.  She scanned the screen some more. Then she turned to me.

“What is your cell phone number?” she asked.

I told her.

“What are the last four digits of your Social Security number?” she asked.  

“I don’t give people my Social Security number,” I said. “I thought that it was illegal to demand it as a form of identification.”

She asked me for the password to one of my online accounts. I don’t know it, I responded. She apparently did not hear me clearly.

“Okay, come around here and type it in yourself,” she instructed.

“I don’t know it,” I repeated.

“All right. Can I have your driver’s license?”

Very suspicious now, I gave her a driver’s license. It was an old one, expired, with outdated information on it. She took it and dutifully logged in the information on her computer. I thought I saw a little smile cross her lips, a small gesture of triumph over me and my silly notions of privacy.

That concluded my interview for a Top Secret security clearance. With apologies to Maxwell Smart, would you believe a bank loan? How about an application to adopt a Labrador puppy?

Nope. I was buying a phone charger cord; yes a charger cord, at a Verizon store in a new mall in Gambrills, MD. Total cost with tax, $31. No cash, no checks. Only a credit card would do, yet another treasure trove of personal information.

I asked the woman why the third-degree.

“This is for the warranty,” she said with a straight face. “The chord comes with a one-year warranty.”

“I can do without the warranty,” I said. “Wouldn’t my receipt be enough information for you if something goes wrong with my cord?”

Silence.

When I got the receipt, it framed the absurdity of the whole experience. The item purchased is described as: BELKIN 2 1A AC W MICRO-US, with a Sales ID of MDSWC201407876, Customer ID: MDJOHNSON140222 (I wonder where the D came from?).

The amount of information behind those letters and numbers could probably fill a CD. The receipt also contained a legal notice regarding open-box and pre-owned devices, a notice regarding the Verizon Invoice, telling me because of this transaction, “certain changes may have been made to your Verizon services.” There was also a notice regarding the Edge Program, something about the first payment due, and a notice regarding returns and a Cellular Sales Customer Agreement. She made me sign it.

All for a $31 cord, including tax.

I left the store, reminded of why I’ve cancelled FIOS and all of the Verizon services I’ve ever had. It is the company’s intrusive nature.

I should not pick on Verizon. Some of my best friends work for Verizon. Verizon is like most other corporate behemoths. They want to know absolutely everything they can about you. They tear down the walls of your privacy as though they were papier mache and they exploit that information to their advantage and your peril.

My other problem with Verizon, however, is its mysteriously complex, bureaucratic, technocratic, impersonal, and impenetrable automatic phone answering system. It is a maze with no exit. It drives you nuts. I believe it is designed to beat you up and spit you out so that you will never call again. I have entered the maze often enough to require medication. It has reduced me to tears and fits of anger.

The last time I tried to get help, I worked my way through dozens of prompts and recorded voices. I was finally routed to a live person—at least I think she was real—in Atlanta, Georgia, in Verizon’s local telephone marketing office. She, of course, had nothing to do at all with cable service repairs.

She was very nice, overflowing in southern syrup, and offered to forward my call, but I’d been there before. When your call is forwarded, you’re spun back into the prompt-o-rama, from which you can only escape by hanging up, and when you hang up, that means starting all over again, which requires more meds.

And besides, it was so refreshing talking to a real person, I didn’t want to let her go. I asked about her kids and where she lived in Atlanta. I asked about the weather and how the Falcons were going to do that year. It was no use. She kept insisting on forwarding my call. I asked her to marry me.

We now have another one of those all-in-one telecommunications services. This time it’s Comcast Infinity, which is more finite than infinite. Some of their services don’t work, either.  But we know better than to call.

The new charger cord is plugged into the wall and seems to be working fine, carrying more information about me, my emails, phone messages, Facebook friends, tweets, and texts to Verizon and presumably a host of other information aggregators who have digitized, optimized, synchronized, analyzed, compromised, sold, and resold everything there is to know about you and me and profited handsomely from it. That’s all before the hackers get their electronic hands on it.

That makes me wonder in whom I should place more trust or be more suspect, the government or international corporate conglomerates. What a choice.

I long for my manual Royal typewriter with no cords attached and that feeling of relief people felt when the last party lines were retired by the phone company and for the first time you were comfortable that no one was listening to your phone conversations.

I confess to being millennially challenged. The more people say that this wholesale invasion of personal privacy is the new normal, the more I think that while it may be new, there is nothing that feels normal about it. Just ask Jennifer Lawrence.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.