Customer Service - Oct 11 2025

 

Customer Service

Oct 11 2025

A disembodied voice

instructs me on which numbers to press;

or, if I’m lost, how to start again.

“Pound”, she says, is my deus ex machina,

descending from the heavens

to wipe the slate clean

and begin anew.

If only all my sins

were so easily expunged. 

She’s a bad listener

but pleasant enough;

ignoring when I interrupt,

but disarming me

with her girl-next-doorish voice

and unflustered delivery.

She holds my hand

as we navigate the phone tree,

forgetting passwords

circling back

and stumbling down false branches,

only to find

that customer service is closed.

I can only guess

whether my trusted guide is prerecorded

or synthetic;

an unpaid intern, doing her best,

or a clever simulacrum of humanity

with perfect diction

and free of human flaws.

I talk loudly and impatiently,

long to be heard.

But she is imperturbable,

a brick wall

of affable indifference,

persisting with her script

no matter how insistently I ask

to speak to someone real.

How futile it feels

shouting into the phone

and going unheard,

unseen,

unserved.

A living human being, made of squishy stuff

in a cybernetic world;

autonomous machines,

grinding on

with steely fortitude 

no matter what.