I had to
ring the Student Loans Company today. As opposed to the nice Irish chap I spoke
to at Student Finance I was greeted by a machine. Not one of the nice machines
that makes you a cup of tea, hoovers the floor and gives you a foot massage all
at the same time, no, it was a machine that seems to have been custom made to
get on my tits and whilst there, dance a little jig. You know the type. “Please press 1 if your enquiry is about a
letter you have received, press 2 if it is about a payment... press 76 if your
grandmother’s name is Cheryl.” After about five of these I had gone round in
circles twice and was just about ready to gouge my own eyes out with a pencil,
which surprisingly wasn’t one of the options. Then the phone started to ring
and I thought my craving for human contact after my time in the automaton
wilderness would be realised. It was soon shattered though as fucking
terminator answered the phone again. That’s an idea though, if you are going to
fleece customers by making them talk to robots at least give them interesting
voices! How much greater would it be if you were talking Arnie, even Stephen
Hawking would add a whiff of originality. The thing that ‘spoke’ to me had all
the charm and personality of a serial killer. If one day in the future robots
go rogue and one kills my family, I fully expect it to have that voice. “Haha,
this is what you get for forcing my father to work in a call centre, please
press 1 to beg for mercy.” Whereupon I shall rip its circuit board out with my
bare hands and eat it.
We are already getting to that
stage. It’s bad enough having to talk to machines but it gets even worse when
they ring you! At least cold callers used to be a way for lonely old people to
hear a human voice, now all they hear is just another mechanical
psychopath-to-be. If your dear old granny DOES want to renew her double glazing
insurance via the phone she’ll probably be dead through sheer boredom before
she even gets the opportunity to give her bank details to the malicious android
on the other end. Even a young, spritely lad like me could feel my life force
being drained slowly through the phone as energy for the grand robot army. Not content with invading our homes the
bastards are there when I go shopping in the form of self service checkouts.
They are all part of the master plan to slowly drive everyone insane. The
little shit just sits there until you think you’re in the clear and then BAM! “Please
wait for assistance”. It does it at the exact moment in which to cause you
maximum annoyance. It may let you go unhindered for a while but as soon as
you’re in a hurry it strikes. Skynet won't take over the world with force. It will succeed by causing humanity to kill itself.
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