Boy Billionaire’s Revenge
‘This facility has been temporarily suspended. Please call customer service on 000’. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Abhimanyu said angrily. He called the customer service.
‘Thank you or calling Talkcom. To continue in English, press 1; For Hindi press 2; for any other language press 3’, said a pleasant prerecorded voice.
He did the needful.
‘For billing related enquiries, press 1; to change your Talk plan, press 2; to change your billing address, press 3; to know about the current schemes, press 4; to know about the privileges program, press 5….’. The pleasant voice was getting irritating as it rolled out the options.
‘What should I press to get my cock sucked’, he shouted into the phone.
‘To speak our customer service officer, please press 9’, the IVR finally got to the option that he sought.
‘Thank you God’ He said. His joy was short-lived.
‘All our customer service officers are attending to enquiries right now. The minimum hold time is 15 minutes’; the sweet voice in the IVR was now irritating beyond description.
‘Are you giving me any other option you bitch? 15 fucking minutes! Idiots! Like I have all the time in the world’, he shouted.
<>The voice changed to the Talkcom jingle. He liked the commercial. It showed a little boy flying a kite and the jingle was quite catchy but today he felt like throwing the boy down from the parapet.‘You can now get all your queries solved online at www.talkcom.com’, the IVR continued. It had already been 25 minutes since he had been holding. ‘Your call is important to us, please stay on the line’.
‘Yeah so you can screw my happiness some more’, he jeered.
The IVR looped into the jingle once more.
And then it stuck him. ‘Why can’t they use this time to something more constructive, like maybe switch to some radio channel while I am on hold or maybe even tie up with products and services and use the time to advertise something else’. He thought excitedly. ‘They already have so much personal information about me, age, sex, payment records, the places where I have availed of discounts they offer….if they tie up with a bank they will get even more information. You can sell me so much stuff…loans, holidays, personal products and take a commission on the purchase. Intelligent IVR – my new contribution to mankind’, he felt happy.
He was already drafting the proposal in his mind, his friend Sushim Roy was the president of Next Telecom, the country’s biggest cellular phone service.
‘All our customer service officers are busy attending to calls, please stay on the line’, the pleasant voice was now a drone. Irritated, he wondered if he should disconnect but decided against it.
‘You can now roam with your Talktel to any part of the country. The IVR continued. ‘All our customer service officers are busy. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line’.
He was now reached the limit of exasperation. He tried to disconnect but instead pressed 1. ‘Billing information. Your current outstanding is Rs.0 and 0 paise. Thank you for your last payment of Rs.6573/- on 22/4/2004’, the IVR responded immediately.
‘See I am a good fucking customer, I talk a lot and I pay my bills on time and still you discontinue my calls and put me on hold for half hour’, his irritation was compounded at his mistake.
The IVR looped back to the beginning, ‘For billing related enquiries, press 1; to change your Talk plan, press 2…. Ashish threw the phone down in exasperation. He let it lie there for a few seconds and then bent down to pick it up. As he looked up he saw the truck, he swerved but could not avoid it and heard a huge noise in his head.
He seemed unhurt and felt no pain. He looked down and saw his car twisted and mangled. ‘How did I survive this? Am I lucky!’ he muttered. Then he heard a voice say, ‘Shit, isn’t this the guy who was on the cover of Business Weekly’. Abhimanyu saw a body lying next to the mangled remains of his car. Abhimanyu panicked and felt his body. He could not feel anything. A barely inaudible voice could be heard, ‘Invalid entry, press 0 to go back to main menu’.
‘It can’t be me, I cannot be dead, my time has not come yet, I stay ahead every time, I win every time, I’ll get even with you’, he shouted.
At that moment all cellular phone services in the country inexplicably stopped operating for 1 minute. Cell phone users were automatically redirected to their respective customer service numbers.
‘Thank you for calling Nextel, if you ant to know who your husband is fucking right now press 1’ was the response one customer got.
‘Hello and welcome to Apple, Your son just robbed a bank and killed the security guard. He is guaranteed to get Life Imprisonment. To talk to a criminal lawyer press 7’, another person heard.
‘Hello, I know that you are broke and spent your all your money at the race track, press 5 to apply for a personal loan and by the way your wife is also connected to this call’, heard a soon to be divorced man.
Somewhere inside the call flow diagrams, boy billionaire did a summersault.
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