I am suffering a total nightmare being on hold to Big Pond, struggling to get my home wireless internet up and running. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been I’ve been running into the local internet centre to do my on-line work (posting my writing exercises etc). I’ve often ended up going in 2 or 3 times per day. It’s been fucking annoying, because Big Pond have been completely hopeless in terms of sending the relevant equipment through, and in terms of their technical support. Bloody useless people. And I haven’t been able to pirate off an unsecured network in any reliable fashion. I calculate that I've spent between 4 and 5 hours on hold with Big Pond. However, I used this as the basis for today's writing exercise: “Welcome to my Nightmare”

Week 2, Exercise 6, Welcome to my nightmare

Welcome to my nightmare. Is there any experience more aggravating, more pointless, more degrading, more nullifying than to be on hold? Knowing that after god-knows-how-many minutes in some listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, or some other piece of muzak that makes you want to tear your fingernails out with your teeth, you’ll only get to speak to some minimum wage, call center fuckwit, who’ll fob you off with some utterly nonsensical piece of bureaucracy that you just know won’t fix your problem. Who’ll say, at least six or seven times, “I understand, but there’s nothing I can do”. Is there? I think not.

This time, I’m listening to Pachabel’s Canon, the most sublime seven chord progression in western music, rendered utterly toxic to me. I hate Pachabel’s Canon. And every shitfuck corporate in the world, too. And the bitch who tells me every 2 or 3 minutes that “my call is important and an operator will be with me shortly”. But when, exactly? I have been on hold for 45 minutes now. The voice is automated, of course, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to find the woman it belongs to, grab her by her pretty blonde hair, and smash her face against a brick wall.

Fortunately, I am not without resources, such as my mobile phone. I send an SOS text message. One friend texts back immediately with a lifesaving observation: at least I’m not listening to Maria Carey. Omigod if that automated bitch tells me to please be patient one more time, I will definitely have a coronary on the fucking spot.

So I move swiftly on to resource number 2, taking my cordless lacquer-red phone that looks like a sex-toy from a French brothel into the bathroom. Outside the little bathroom window I can hear the hum of the city going about its daily business. The roar of a bus, the clank of some pile driver on a nearby building site, a man shouting. My life, meanwhile, is utterly on hold. And so I slam open the goody drawer and unscrew the little orange bottle. I break a valium in two and swallow one half. I am practiced, and can do this with only a dollop of saliva. I consider the other half of the valium in my palm. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I swallow it.

Suddenly, Pachabel’s Canon breaks in mid-leitmotif, and there’s a click on the line. Something is happening! I hold my breath for the most important question facing modern man: will I reach a real person, or will I be cut off, sent spiralling down into terrible purgatory?

“Hi this is Andrea. How may I help you?”
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I feel like weeping. And it’s not some Banjit from Bangalore – awfully nice people I’m sure, but I can’t understand a fucking word they say.

“Yes, omigod, thank you, yes!” I blurt. “You sent me a red notice saying that if I didn’t pay my phone bill in one week you’d cut me off and take me to court. But you’ve billed me for 19 calls to Kazakhstan that aren’t mine. I don’t even know where Kazakhstan is.” I am fully aware that I sound hysterical. Because I am.

“Sir, this isn’t the right department for that. I’m going to transfer you.”
“No wait, please, I’ve been on hold for 52 minutes…”
But it’s too late. Click, beep, silence.
“Hello? Hello?”
I want to die. Or kill everyone in the world.