You can bank on being confused by machines

IPOURED my evening drink earlier than usual the other day in order to soothe my tattered nerves after an afternoon arguing with a machine. It all started when I came home to find a message on my answering machine asking me to call an 0800 number and speak to my bank about some “unusual activity” on my account.

(That’s enough to cause sleepless nights for a start). I dialled the number and I was spoken to my a rather snooty machine that ordered me to “press one to continue”, and I duly prodded 1.

The machine said, “We are unable to retrieve your account information”, and ordered me to punch in my telephone number.

I found this very strange, because it wasn’t me that started the debate. I didn’t ask the bank to call and harass me. They had called me, so they obviously had my phone number.

However, I pressed the required keys to record my number and the machine said, “sorry, that is an invalid number”. “Please press a different number.” I tried entering my cellphone number and was again told it was invalid. What was I supposed to do? Go out and buy another phone just to please a bullying machine?

After more than an hour of pressing numbers and being insulted by that arrogant machine I actually managed to speak to a human.

By now I was irritated to say the least and I might have said one or two unkind things about his bank’s machine.

It took a while for him to soothe me and he asked for my identity number, which I gave him and after a few moments to establish my identity he consulted my account details and declared he could find no unusual activity on my account whatsoever.

He mentioned that he noticed I had used my card to pay for the previous day’s eggs Benedict breakfast, but didn’t find this unusual enough to set the bank’s machine on to me. Ordering eggs Benedict was not particularly alarming offence, he had to admit.

He confessed to being as confused about his machine’s behaviour as I was and we parted on reasonably good terms.

I admit I did feel slightly better about it all afterwards because if the chap at Standard Bank was as confused as I was by his idiotic electronic colleague, then it was probably not simply another case of age-related obsolescence, for which I am grateful.

Incidents involving electronics usually turn out to be my fault.

Last Laugh

After a rather mysterious incident the news editor of a local newspaper sent one of his reporters out to do an interview.

At the home of the interviewee the reporter asked: “Mr Jones, is it true you went out into your garden this morning and discovered the body of a complete stranger lying among your rose bushes?”

“Well, yes,” said Mr Jones, “although he wasn’t a complete stranger.”

At this the reporter raised an eyebrow and asked: “What do you mean by that?”

“He was missing an arm and a leg.”