Saturday Sample: Past and preset by Rosemary Johnson. An Important Call, cold coffee

 Your call is important to us. It has been placed in a queue’. The voice at the end of the phone sounds like a machine and probably is one.

I say nothing.

I’m just settling into listening to Greensleeves when it cuts in again. ‘Calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes’.

More Greensleeves then Handel’s Water Music, played on something weird, panpipes possibly. I tap out the rhythm on my desk.

‘All our call-centre operatives are busy at the moment’.

I reach for my mug, only to remember that I finished my coffee some time ago. Do machines take tea breaks? 

‘We are experiencing an exceptionally high volume of calls at this time’.

You don’t say? Now I’m getting a signature-tune to some television programme from the 1980s. What was it now?

‘Customers are respectfully requested to check that appliances are connected to the power supply.’

Yes, yes, yes. I know that story about the bloke (or woman) who swore his (or her) printer didn’t work and found he (or she) hadn’t switched it on. But I'm not an idiot. My issue is real. I click my mouse several times. Still nothing’s happening on my screen. I need to speak to someone, a proper human being.

Still that awful theme tune. What was that programme?  All I can recall is that I didn’t like it. And I don’t want to hear it now. Come on. Speak to me.

‘Answers to many frequently asked questions are available on our website’.

Yes, yes, you stupid machine, but what good is that to me?  Come on. Where are you, you terribly busy call-centre operatives?  I don’t believe you’re there at all. Or that you even exist.

Not Greensleeves again. I'm going to complain. On Facebook, on X and all the other social media. I’ll write to the local paper. I’ll contact my MP, the Prime Minister even. He needs to know that people in this country have stopped talking to each other.

‘Good afternoon, caller. How can I help you today?’

‘Right. At last. I’ve got no internet.’

‘No internet, madam?’

‘Yes. I mean, no. No internet. I need you to send someone round- ‘

‘We don’t deal with internet queries here, madam. You’ll need to log your service request through our website.’

How?

 

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About the author 

Rosemary Johnson has had short stories and flash fiction published in CaféLit, Fiction on the Web, Friday Flash Fiction, Paragraph Planet, The Copperfield Review, Scribble and Radgepacket and broadcast on Hannah’s Bookshelf (North Manchester FM). She is a member of the Association of Christian Writers (until recently responsible for the ACW website) and she reviews books for Together (trade magazine for the Christian publishing industry). Rosemary loves reading and started writing at a very young age because her favourite authors hadn’t written enough books to keep her occupied. A history graduate, she particularly enjoys writing historical fiction and her novel, Wodka, Or Tea With Milk, set during the Solidarity period in Poland in the 1980s, is published by The Conrad Press. Rosemary blogs at https://rosemaryreaderandwriter.wordpress.com/