That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.
Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called “sludge.”
In hindsight I’ll say: I always thought going crazy would be more exciting—roaming the street in a bathrobe, shouting at fruit. Instead I spent a weary season of my life saying representative. Speaking words and numbers to robots. Speaking them again more clearly, waiting, getting disconnected, finally reaching a person but the wrong person, repeating my story, would I mind one more brief hold. May my children never see the emails I sent, or the unhinged delirium with which I pressed 1 for agent.
I was tempted to bury the whole cretinous ordeal, except that I’d looked behind the curtain and vowed to document what I’d seen.
