NO more relationships with 'girls next door'!; - after TWO in the 'Priory Street Posse'!

• Using the telephone to talk to representatives of more and
more organizations, especially commercial ones, has
become, and is becoming, increasingly fraught. You
usually now get a ludicrously positive, beaming, robot
humanoid voice, terribly terribly well-spoken, not a real
person. You are asked to push a series of buttons
supposed to home you in on the option you want to
address when you deal with them. Then all too often one
of two things happens: - (a) you discover to your horror
that this phone call is being answered in a completely
inhuman automated way – there is no possibility of
actually talking to a human being not a robot humanoid
voice interpretation machine that often mishears you or
hangs up unexpectedly. (b) You wait ten or twenty
minutes listening to that company’s taste in piped muzak
‘on hold’ – most irritating when they play the same
(depressing?) muzak track over and over again. Then
when you finally get through to a human voice, and ask a
slightly difficult question not on their computer screen,
they say ‘do you mind if I put you on hold for a moment?’
which turns into a further ten or twenty minutes, far from
‘a moment’. They are really saying, were they honest
about it ‘I do not mind putting you on hold for ten minutes
when I say ‘a moment’. You are footing the phone bill and
we ensure it is a premium rate number so we get a large
payment from the phone company from your bill – for
keeping you on hold.’
• Another form of ‘computer-money complex’ phone abuse,
also just keeps getting more and more common and
intrusive. Increasingly when my phone rings, it is no
friend, not even a real person on the far end. It is a
recording of another robot humanoid, pleasantly inviting
you to buy their service or pay for everything apart from
the actual fare of the Mediterranean Cruise it claims you
have won. Nobody likes con artist robots ringing you up
like that.
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