Long life | 7 April 2012

The most common lie you hear on the telephone is the one in which a recorded voice says, ‘Your call is important to us.’ Do not be fooled. Your call is not important to anyone, except to the extent that it warns an organisation that you would like to talk to one of its employees. Alarm bells go off, drawbridges are pulled up, and procedures are put into effect to ensure that you are thwarted in this presumptuous ambition. Members of staff then return to their peaceful routines, such as flirting with each other on the internet.

Companies pretend to put their customers first, but everyone knows that they don’t. Their normal priority is to arrange things for their own comfort and convenience. Elaborate systems are set up to protect their employees from the outside world and to see that they suffer as little aggravation as possible. Another corporate objective is to hold costs down, and this also means keeping contact with customers to a minimum.