Your Call Is Not
Very Important To Us
by Roz Warren
PLEASE
STAY ON THE LINE.
Or don’t
stay on the line. We don’t care. If we
cared about your call, we’d answer it. Which,
to be honest, isn’t going to happen.
We’re
going to make you hold. And hold. And while you
hold, we’re going to subject you to some
really bad music. For a very long time. If
that doesn’t drive you away, maybe
we’ll let finally you talk to somebody.
They will be
friendly and cheerful but completely unable to
help you.
BECAUSE
YOUR CALL IS NOT VERY IMPORTANT TO US.
We don’t
care about your call, or about the problem you
are seeking to resolve, or about you. We care
deeply about the lovely banknotes in your wallet.
But that’s as far as our caring goes.
PLEASE
STAY ON THE LINE.
When we say
that, we’re lying!
We really want
you to hang up and go away. Answering the phone,
even with an automatic system like this, costs
money. We’d much rather you log onto our
website, so we can fire the few remaining phone-answering
employees we actually have left on the payroll.
YOUR
CALL WILL BE ANSWERED BY THE NEXT AVAILABLE
OPERATOR.
Now
there’s a laugh.
It’s true
as far as it goes, but it implies that there are
sufficient operators -- somewhere -- standing by
waiting to take your call.
In your dreams,
pal.
Once upon a
time, there were.
Back in the
Golden Age of Customer Service, in the halcyon
days of the rotary phone, we had a huge team of
well-informed, motivated people who promptly took
calls and actually cared about helping you.
We fired them
all and replaced them with five guys in Bangalore.
They are eager
to speak with you, so that they can practice
their English language skills. Unfortunately,
they will barely be able to understand you, let
alone understand your problem. Helping you solve
that problem is, of course, totally out of
the question, so:
PLEASE
STAY ON THE LINE.
How many hours
will you spend in Customer Service Limbo
listening to crap music and our lying insistence
that we care and our relentless plugging of our
website before you hang up? Or hang yourself?
We don’t
know. And we don’t care.
So go ahead --
PLEASE
STAY ON THE LINE.
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