I'm trying to get back into the swing of things after a long convalescence and I've been pretty down about being taken out of the game for so long and the political capital it has cost me. Typically, when I'm feeling professionally blue I dial up Laura the Debt Bitch. It is not that she is cheery or full of sunshine or anything, quite the opposite really, it is just that her attitude is so dismissive that it makes me smile. Laura has this thing about "face time." If a firm is going to impose the silly requirement for "face time" on her and she has nothing to do, well damn if she won't use firm resources to entertain herself. She's quite good at it and my growing collection of paper clip origami originated with her adept instruction.
I dial her direct line and it rings, seemingly endlessly, before she picks up with a hurried and annoyed tone. I am about to tell her it is me, as is my practice. She knows already because of the Caller ID, of course, but the Debt Bitch believes it is very rude to display phone number clairvoyance when answering the phone. She's a huge proponent of feigning surprise on answering. But not this time-
"Hold on a secon-" and she's gone. A long pause ensues. I strongly suspect now that the phone system on her end is designed to annoy her with a soft twittering after twenty seconds of leaving someone on hold (assuming that twenty seconds is too long for a "customer" to wait). I suspect this because every twenty seconds she would pop back on the line with a "One more secon-" before dropping me into the holding pit again, probably just to shut the twittering up. Finally, after the sixth or seventh time I try to interrupt her.
"Last time," she says for the third time.
"Laura, Laura."
"Yes? What? Hurry!"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm officiating the final gladiatorial bout of 411 v. 411."
"What?"
"The final... oh, just a second I will patch you in." The phone clicks, then I am on hold before I'm conferenced into automated chaos.
"Automated directory assistance. What city and state please?"
"Automated directory assistance. What city and state please?"
"Ok, you said Star Lake, Wisconsin, right?"
"Ok, you said Talbott, Tennesse, right?"
"Sorry, I didn't understa-"
"Sorry, I didn't understand, did I get the city and state right?"
"Ok, you said Longs, South Carolina, right?"
"Ok, you said Mount Sterling, Wisconsin, right?"
"Sorry, I did-"
"Ok, you said Star Lake, Wisconsin, right?"
"Please wait while I transfer you to an operator."
"Sorry, I didn't understand, did I get the city and state right?"
"What the hell is that?" I ask. Laura starts laughing hysterically.
"Shh, you can't talk! Oh, never mind." There is a click, and the automated voices are gone before she continues. "I absolutely hate, I mean hate to the core of my being, the automated, voice recognition information systems that 411 uses. They are developed by 'TellMe,' this shitty little Microsoft subsidiary. Why is it that every little firm that has something worth buying get snagged by Microsoft and simultaneously injected with a mediocrity adjuvant that proceeds to dumb it down to near useless goo right before using it as a foundation for major infrastructure building?" I don't answer. I know better than to interrupt the Debt Bitch when she's like this.
"I'm a busy woman," she continues. "I am likely to be talking to the driver, someone next to me or someone on the phone or in my office while I am waiting the 20 seconds it takes for that stupid voice to finish telling me that it is 'automated directory service info by AT&T,' or whatever. So, of course, I'm in the middle of a conversation and the damn voice won't wait until it is finished to start trying to understand me. So I'm constantly getting 'Sorry, I didn't understand you,' or 'What listing in Bufu, Egypt?' before I even have said anything. Well, now what? Do I make one up, 'Andrew Dice Clay's Camero' perhaps, and wait for it to send me to an operator? Then either the operator thinks I'm crazy, or the damn software proactively connects me to 'Achmed's Used Camel Paradise' in Bufu, Egypt and I have to call back."
"I see the problem," I lie.
"The damn things are always picking up external noise and interpreting it. It is like they are hearing some satanic message in the noise of a backwards playing record, or those people who hear the voices and see the images of their beloved dead in the white noise of television snow. It is total bullshit. So I got to thinking, what do they do when you pit them against one another. Try it. Conference like three of them together. The trick is the timing, to get one to start about half a sentence before the next one. Then they are always talking to each other."
"Uh, you conferenced three of them?"
"Yeah. Actually, I have to go. Star Lake, Wisconsin needs two more points to win the championship.
