Call centres seem to know my every move.

The phone rings, goes to BT Answer. Two seconds later, phone rings again. I picked up.

It’s the type of situation you’d get into with an ex-girlfriend. When you answer & they unleash the “Are you hiding from me” speech on you, much like fingernails down a chalk board, a pair of new shoes on laminate floor or any line of dialogue ever spoken by Bobcat Goldthwait. Should they really be angry that I didn’t pick up the first time? After all, they must go through the same situation 100 times in a shift.

The problem with thinking that is, I end up seeing them as slaves to the wage. Identifying with the person on the other side of the phone is usually a good thing, it’s expected. When they are trying to get you to fork over money or change gas supplier though? Then they really get into your head. “I’m like that too” says the machine* while it clicks away at the mouse, no doubt hooked up to a 486 running Windows 3.1.1 and whatever database software they could find on Amazon for pennies. Maybe it’s my fault. It’s not often you hear from someone in a call centre situated in the same country &/or island as yourself these days. I must’ve unknowingly let them delve into my inner psyche & find those issues I’ve tucked away underneath the wank bank & memories of days gone by, in the overflowing shame section.

My favourite breed of call centre staff are those with the same range of emotions as Keanu Reeves . You can tell as soon as you answer the phone that they’re only half as compassionate as Amon Göth was. No small talk, “I’m busy right now” or any other type of distraction you can think of will throw them off course.

*I like to think (actually, I hope) that none of them are real people. A patch for MS Sam, spitting out the same paragraph over & over again until they have a power cut or the database runs out of numbers to ring.