Waiting for Rajiv

"Dad can you help with this?"
"I can't"
"Why not?"
"I'm waiting for Rajiv."

"Honey,  can you get Liam down off the table?"
"I can't"
"Why not?"
"I'm waiting for Rajiv"

Has anyone guessed what I'm doing yet?  That's right,  I'm trying to make a change to my insurance policy.

I've been on the phone for 20 minutes now and,  despite being constantly reassured of the importance of my call,  I don't seem to be any closer to being allowed to spend more of my hard earned money. 

After twenty minutes, my wife's patience had given out and I have to make some contribution to the evening riot control that masquerades under the guise of family life.  So when someone asks who swept the floor,  took the clothes off the line or separated the warring parties who were joined tooth-to-buttock, you can answer a-la Harrison Ford: "It was the one  armed man." The other arm being occupied holding a mobile phone to my ear despite the harm I  know it's doing to my brain.

Not because the radiation is frying the little grey cells but because the hold music is liquefying my higher mental functions.  I am no stranger to minimalism and I have been known to enjoy a little Part or Phillip Glass - a man who never met a three note motif he didn't develop an unhealthy obsession with  - but the stuff bleating at me out of the phone is something else again.  12 bars,  three chords and two descending scales with a slightly flat final note do not a piece of music make - no matter how many times you repeat it.

It has the virtue - if such it can be called - of at least softening my mental acuity to the point where I almost don't notice that, in an attempt to make it seem like I'm getting somewhere and won't be stuck in this nihilistic nightmare for all eternity - that they're alternating the recorded apologies from "All our operators are busy" to "All our consultants are still busy" every thirty seconds or so.

The other ruse appears to be pretending that my audience with Rajiv - when it is ultimately graciously granted - will be made more efficient if I pre-enter some identifying details.  So I've entered by account number,  my PIN, my secret access code,  my date of birth and proven I am not a robot by solving the quadratic equation and I'm all ready for Rajiv to welcome me with a cheery "Good evening Mr Young". And what do I get? "Could you spell your surname please?"

Spell it? It's "Young". Without meaning to stereotype,  there's a good bet that three quarters of the alphabet features in your name somewhere.  How many ways are there to spell "Young"?

But I shouldn't be surprised. I've already fallen for the first con - I really believed that I could make my choices just by speaking.  In what way did "insurance" sound like "balance transfer"? I flatter myself that I speak fairly clearly.  Most of my interlocutors manage to comprehend my utterances without having to transfer me to an operator or get me to press 2, then 1, then 3, then hang up and call back on another number specifically set up just for landlord's insurance on properties with fewer than 4 bedrooms located north of 19 degrees south latitude.

Really none of this is anything I can change but I do wish that they'd stop thanking me for my patience.  I'm not being patient,  I would scream obscenities but you're a machine and my kids are within earshot.

So I wait,  quietly, fuming and waiting for Rajiv