My kingdom for a human

(Illustration courtesy of Slate magazine)

I don’t know anybody who appreciates talking to a machine.

You get a call, it’s a recording.

You call a number, you get a recording.

Dial this.
Then this.
Say yes.
Press # pound.
Just say no.
Jump through this hoop.
Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

It’s aggravating. It seems half the phone calls we get these days are recorded political messages from candidates.

We’ve been through all this before. I’m not going to rehash old arguments.

Like most everybody else, I want to talk to a live voice, a real person. If I could, I would want to be able to pinch their skin and have them say ''ouch!"

I mention all this to tell you about an annoying phone call I’ve been getting every day for the past six weeks. It’s a call to my cell phone. And it happens every afternoon, without fail. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I know the number, so I usually don’t bother to answer when it shows up on the Caller ID. I just let it slide over to the voice mail.

It’s a law firm in Atlanta, and it’s a recording. It’s not even a real person doing the recording. It’s a computer-generated voice. The recording is only activated if I answer the phone and say something. If I don't say anything, it will not talk to me.

This law firm is looking for a person at the request of a client. This law firm believes it is calling the number of the person it is trying to locate.

It’s not, of course. It’s me. The recording has told me, time and time again, if I am not this person, to please call the law firm at a toll-free number.

I refuse. If a real person will call me, I will politely tell them they have the wrong number.

Friends have told me I ought to block the call. After all, it is very annoying.

Nah, what I really want is for them them to finally have a real person call me

I haven’t done anything wrong. Since when is not returning recorded voice messages against the law?

In the meantime, I hope this law firm spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to find this person.

All it would take would be a phone call.

From a human being.