The call to Hell

I hate talking on the phone, specifically I hate talking on the phone to my broadband provider and the council. It could be about housing tax, emergency repairs or a tree fell on our neighbours - anything, I don’t like talking on the phone in general not even to my friends or family but I really hate calling city council or any official organisation.

Why? It’s the tone of the operators give; they speak to you as if they were having their lunch and you had placed your feet right into it. Sometimes I hear, ‘hello, how can I help but I feel like they’re actually saying, ‘why - just why.’

Being the eldest in a family of immigrants I don’t unfortunately have much of a choice. I have to talk to whomever my parents need me to talk to and translate during or after the call. As annoying as it is, my parents have a lot on their plate so I must persevere, climb that mountain, and endure the never ending, condescending, judgmental agony. I’m forever at the mercy of the whims of a person on the other side of the phone. Pleading and hoping nothing has made them angry that day and given their choice of career - I think that’s asking for more than a miracle.

I’ve being doing this since I was 6 and you’d think that I would have developed a tolerance for this by now like an addict on drugs but quite the opposite in fact I seem to have become even more anxious as the years have passed. What’s my solution – well I have developed what I call the three rules to follow for a non-confrontational and respectable way to protect my dignity whilst on the phone to the great enemy. I've written an entire blog post with that title.

First, communicate effectively and warmly. This might sound strange as they are the ones who are suppose to help you, have great interpersonal skills and have an inviting demeanour but you’re better off considering them more like butchers at a slaughter house and your the cattle. You’re just a piece of meat and they’ve become too desensitized by now to think of you as human. So, make sure you don’t give them any reason to bring down the blade any quicker than they normally would. The best you can hope for is that they at least direct you to the correct department and don't leave you with too many scars..

Second, expect to get violated. Remember you are at a slaughter house and you are the meat. They’ve got a job to do and it so happens that job means your going to get chopped up too little pieces and significant part of who and what you are, and what think of yourself will be discarded away in the trash and the core part of you packaged and sold. So, try not to cry. I mean it. The only hope you have is that they do it quickly.

Third, be clear and concise. This connects to the first rule. Don’t meander and bring in irrelevant information. They want to get this over with as much as you do so make this painless for both parties as much as possible. Don’t go on a tangent about how your neighbours keeps playing the same five songs over and over again and that ob-la-di ob-la-da la la la la life goes on feels like someone is kicking you in balls. Seriously, the person on the other side of the phone already feels bad enough don’t make it worse.

However, it isn’t all bad all the time. Sometimes I get a fellow northerner who wants nothing more than to have a nice chat in between the serious stuff. They’ll talk about their children, favourite restaurant and why I should never buy tuna sweetcorn sandwich from the petrol station on the Evergreen Road – he was right by the way. Midway in such a conversation I always let out a sigh of relief and say thank you more times than I need to. Given that I live in England I'm already saying thank you at least a dozen times in a normal conversation anyway so you can imagine how many thank you's are coming out of me in just over two minutes. Probably enough to fill a fantasy novel.

Other occasions and now more frequently I get someone who also comes from an immigrant background. However, these conversations can go either way. When you have experienced such a traumatic experience – yes I said traumatic I’m not exaggerating – it can leave you in a state of such emptiness to the point where your own sense of relief from this is too spread the disease and let others join you in the pit of despair.

Once I called the council to discuss free school meals for my little bother and the first thing I heard was, “hello my name is Samira”, I can’t explain to you clearly what happened next, I’ve tried to piece the events of that moment like a private investigator that is trying to find a lost child that went missing 10 years ago. All I can say is the psychological excrement’s she flung at me are still, after five months, a part of my psyche. Every day I can still smell it the foul stench lodged into my brain. I felt like I was in a street in southern Spain and I was being chased by raging bulls and worse I was dressed from head to toe in red.

Speaking of faeces, a pipe bursts on our street, unfortunately not for the first time. The pipe in question contained sewage and specifically a mixture of faeces, urine and water. The brown liquid covered the tarmac and worse I lived on a slope and it was slowly moving towards our doorstep. With the mission impossible theme playing in my head, I picked up the phone and for first time in a while with no sense of apprehension, I dialed the emergency services. The problem was all my neighbours had the same idea so when I called a Amelia picked up and in a very stern and annoyed voice explained to me that the problem was being dealt with. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of inquiring further about what they knew or had been told.

She put me on hold and I sat there in my kitchen listening to everybody hurts for 10 minutes straight. Meanwhile my friend was outside with his wife arguing in a car right outside my window and the kids next door were all shouting in unison, “its almost hear”. Amelia finally takes me off hold and tells me word for word exactly what she told me the first time. Unfortunately, I lost it a bit. To hell with the rules. I have my rights. I deserve to be treated with respect don’t I. Sometimes you just have to speak your mind, pull up your trousers and act like a man. I could almost hear her eyebrows raise and she said with the most sinister voice imaginable, “don’t worry ill give you exactly what you deserve” as she put me hold for a further 10 minutes but this time without any music at all.

She picked up and I must admit I raised my voice a few times. Sure I got a little carried away but that does not excuse the vile tirade she threw at me as a response. All I can say is that I had to sit on the floor for the abuse that was being hurled my way. Forget about the faeces outside because Amelia was hurling some straight at me. I was beginning to regret not following the plan.

I’m being domesticated I thought, why is this happening, my dad said this would happen when I got married, why is this happening now. Why during a phone call to emergency services about a burst sewage pipe, which its content was moving ever so closer to my home. Then again, the whole scenario felt very poignant looking at my friend arguing with his wife in the car, still not noticing the river of faeces that was flowing beneath them, me being yelled and told all the things that were wrong with people like me by a complete stranger over the phone, the smell which at this point was so ever present that I began to question if it had always been there. It all felt strangely poetic.

She put me on hold again for 3 minutes until a gentleman picked up and I this time I truly lost it. I shouted and screamed. I swung my arms up in the air, my veins showing and I once again i was put on hold again. A moment of silence. Then. Ha ha ha ha. Stay alive. Stay alive.