“It’s not fair to call it a ‘penchant’, frustration was not something I sought, or liked,” said the skeleton of my father.

Fair enough.  Except the internets inform us that ‘penchant’, in addition to meaning ‘liking, fondness, preference, partiality’ also means ‘weakness, inclination, bent, bias, proclivity, predilection, predisposition.’  

“Okay, fine.  I was predisposed to be tortured by frustration,” said the skeleton.  “Although, ‘penchant’ really is the wrong word, Elie.  I wasn’t partial to being frustrated, it wasn’t some guilty pleasure, it was a tic, not something I leaned toward out of any sort of preference for it.  I was compelled, you could say.”

I’m thinking of this because I just gritted my teeth the way you used to during the last few minutes of a frustrating 17 minute chat with a bored customer service rep for the Apple Bank, after the requisite five minutes with a series of bots and an infernal loop of muzak, to reset a log-in password I’d not been informed needed to be changed until I got a ‘this account has been locked’ notice with the helpline number.   It is a more and more common feature of the corporate world, saves these fucks real money having a robot tell you how important your business is to them, please continue to hold, or press four to go fuck yourself.  In your day, they were just perfecting the bottom line corporate techniques that are ubiquitous now.  

“There was a time, long ago, when a conversation like that would begin ‘I’m sorry you’re having trouble, we’ve had a lot of calls on that, I can help you.’  I know I was never one for an apology, but the culture itself now considers giving an apology the equivalent of consenting to anal sex,” said the skeleton.  

True, and yet, some part of me still somehow expects an apology when I follow inartfully drafted directions, and then, instead of any kind of mealy mouthed ‘I’m sorry’ when the thing still doesn’t work, get blamed for being impatient when I follow all the prompts and am still denied service.  

“As that affable alcoholic dispatcher at Prometheus Courier Service used to say, ‘nobody cares… nobody cares’.”    

He said it with the saddest smile, a really well-meaning smile.  

“Well, it was wise, in a way, because, as a rule, nobody cares.  You think that humorless drone you just spoke to, who blamed you for not reading some junk mail sent out in May, when all your other correspondence about on-line banking was conducted through e-mail, cared?   She told you that you should have visited the website and read about the planned renovation, the necessity for every customer to agree to a new internet policy, change their password and follow new security procedures.   It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right.  She certainly doesn’t care one way or the other if you are locked out of the bank’s website.  It’s your problem.”  

Yeah.  I was speaking to someone with a crap job who is badly paid, hates her job, listens to frustrated or abusive customers all day long, goes home, gets snarled at by her powerless, frustrated, abusive spouse, goes to work the next day to do it all over again.  

“Nobody cares, Elie, nobody cares.  If only I had really digested that when I was alive.  It could have liberated me from the wheel of frustration I was so often lashed to, expecting people to do their jobs properly, to not be fucking idiots.  That’s why I loved that Red Foxx bit where he was being dicked around by phone support, you know, on Sanford and Son, and, in exasperation he finally asks the person he’s talking to if she’s a recording or a human.  When she tells him she’s a human he says ‘I’m a human too!’   How much more could people relate to that now?!”  

It depends if they’re recordings or people, I suppose.  

“You know what, Elie?  It’s time to read those sixty pages you harvested yesterday and cut them down to ten, start sending them to corporate types to read.   Distasteful as that might seem, that’s the work you should be doing right now, not venting to some imaginary skeleton.”  

You make a not unreasonable point.  

“Please continue to hold, your business is very important to us,” said the skeleton, extending a middle finger.