ONE OF THE IRONIES of modern life is that as communications technology advances exponentially, so it becomes proportionally more difficult to get a human voice on the line.
Phone calls to unearth the simplest piece of consumer information can leave you lost in a numerological labyrinth, making futile stabs at buttons as menus unfold that seem to encompass every possible question except the one you want answered.
Depending on your patience, mood and capacity to process torrents of information, these machines can leave you whimpering and quietly muttering to yourself, or performing for your workmates rude arias of frustration, a high-pitched chorus of invective soaring over the timpani thump of headset on desk.
The disembodied voices which greet callers seem to come in two main varieties - metallic and detached, as if to remind you what an insignificant worm you are, or insincerely cheerful, to provoke you to greater fits of rage and despair.
'But I just want . . . to . . . talk . . . to . . . someone,' you stammer pathetically, as you push the wrong button and end up back at the start of the menu, or find yourself abandoned in broadband purgatory, with only the tinny notes of Greensleeves or The Blue Danube to lend succour.
Of course, companies love these automatic answering machines. Executives can save a fortune by sacking most of their telephone operators then sit smugly in their lairs, insulated from the bad-tempered, incessant demands of the great unwashed. (We probably wouldn't be in such bad moods if we could just pick up the phone and speak to a human being once in a while.) Who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs?
