Photo by Cynthia Larsen

Monitoring the monitors

By Ed Goldman

When we phone a business or government office it takes us a while to click through the prompts (“If this is an emergency, hang up and call someone else immediately!”) and the dated on-hold music (why do I always get 1974’s “Hooked on a Feeling” by Bjorn Skifs and Blue Swede?).  

Then, when we’re finally about to speak with an allegedly living human, we hear one more cautionary obstacle: “This call may be monitored and recorded for training purposes and continued customer satisfaction.”

Not even Donald Trump can squeeze that many lies into a single sentence. In short order, it’s highly dubious (1) that your call is being monitored; (2) that your call is being recorded; (3) that if your call is being recorded it’s to “train” anyone but the A-I ‘bot about to replace the customer satisfaction rep; and (4) that you’d be calling in the first place if you were a satisfied customer, much less a continually satisfied one.

When I’m in an especially cantankerous mood—like, say, it’s morning, afternoon or evening on a weekday or weekend—I tell the human being I finally reach, “I hope like hell this call is being monitored and recorded because I’m infuriated.”

To be taken seriously, it may be advisable for you to do hard-stop after saying “infuriated” and not finish the sentence with “and probably not in my right mind” or “and sure, I’ve had a few cocktails, but that’s immaterial vis a vis this call.” Another tip: If you must say “vis a vis” in an angry call—and you don’t mispronounce it “viss uh viss”—you may sound like you’re so angry you stepped out of your Mensa meeting to make the call. This is a lot more effective than beginning a sentence with “As a scholar” if the remaining message is along the somewhat pedantic lines of “and I still can’t make my TiVo work.”)

I’ve been wondering what it’d be like to be a staffer who gets paid to listen to those supposedly recorded calls.

I think I’d qualify for a job like that. Decades of interviewing people have demonstrated that I’m equally capable of sitting for lengthy periods of time and pretending to listen to people as they talk. I also think it’s a plus that I already don’t go anywhere very often since this job seems tailor-made for a sole practitioner who enjoys sitting down. I imagine this might be my first memo to the boss:

Memo to: HR Manager

From: Call Monitor II

Re: Phyllis Something

I’m sorry I don’t know Phyllis’s last name but I’m gambling on there not being too many Phyllises in the bedding department. If so, perhaps this brief report will identify the one I monitored.  

Customers complain that Phyllis’s foreign accent is impenetrable, and tend to apologize for not being well-traveled enough to recognize it (“My bad for skipping the Tunisian refresher course at the adult learning center”). The fact that the Phyllis you’ve had me monitoring is from Torrance, California, tells me this is less a matter of her having a foreign accent than a breathtaking lack of both enunciation and word-choice skills.  

Even I—as a gifted multilingualist in English, American, Southern, Bronx and Pig Latin—couldn’t tell what she was trying to say when she asked me how my day was going. It came out, “Sliker you liker layer wuh?”