Happy New Year

by Hergé

Where am I? #12

Here

Where am I? #11

Here

Annoying Utterances

“Thank you for calling. Your call is very important to us. All of our associates are busy serving other customers. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order received”.

Translation: “We’ve put you on indefinite hold, and won’t tell you where you are in the queue or your expected wait time. We don’t want to spend a lot of money on staff since that cuts into our profits. So you get to listen to prerecorded music with frequent repetitions of this message until you get frustrated and hang up. If you do get through, you’re going to talk to someone sitting in a call center halfway around the world who will spend the first five minutes verifying your identity. We know that we have no competition, so you’re going to have to deal with us on our terms. Sucka!” More at the New York Times

Kindness and change

. . . Rabbi Weisser, who suspected the person threatening him was Mr. Trapp, got his telephone number and started leaving messages on the answering machine. “I would say things like: ‘Larry, there’s a lot of love out there. You’re not getting any of it. Don’t you want some?’ And hang up,” he said. “And, ‘Larry, why do you love the Nazis so much? They’d have killed you first because you’re disabled.’ And hang up. I did it once a week.”

More at the New York Times

More from Santa Fe

The way to Santa Fe

The Line-Up