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[Noozhawk’s note: This column is intended to be satirical only and does not intend to refer to any existent local government agency. Any similarity between the references and actual agencies is purely accidental.]
Beep-beep-beep.
Beep-beep-beep.
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
“Hello. You have reached the Office of Emergency Services. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1. If this is not an emergency, please press 2 for a list of our emergency services.”
Beep.
“You just pressed 2 for a list of our emergency services. Press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish, press 3 for Ukranian, press 4 for Mandarin, press 5 for Swahili, press 6 if you do not understand any of these languages.”
Beep.
“You have just pressed 1 for English. Please press 1 if you have a medical emergency, press 2 if this is a fire emergency, press 3 if this is a criminal emergency or press 4 if it is some other kind of emergency. Please note — we do not handle financial emergencies. For that, call our Office of Financial Services at 805.555.1212. Its hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.”
Beep.
“You have just pressed 2 to report a fire emergency. If this is a house fire, press 1, if it is an automobile fire, press 2, if this is a brush fire, press 3, if it is any other type of fire, press 4.”
Beep.
“You have just pressed 1 to report a house fire. If this fire is of unknown origin, please press 1, if you know how the fire started, press 2, for all other situations, press 3.”
Beep.
“You have just pressed 1 to report a house fire of unknown origin. Please hold the line for the next available operator.”
Pause.
“All of our operators are currently busy handling calls from other customers. If you do not choose to wait you can leave a callback number and one of our operators will call you back as soon as one is available.
“Your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line until one of our operators can help you.”
Fifteen-second pause.
“All of our operators are currently busy handling calls from other customers. Your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line until one of our operators can help you.”
Fifteen-second pause.
“All of our operators are currently busy handling calls from other customers. Your call is very important to us, so please stay on the line until one of our operators can help you.”
Five-second pause.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm” (dial tone).
— Paul Burri is an entrepreneur, inventor, columnist, engineer and iconoclast. He has been a counselor with the Santa Barbara chapter of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) for the past eight years. SCORE offers free business counseling to local businesses. He is also the membership director of the Channel City Camera Club. The opinions and comments in this column are his alone and do not reflect the opinions or policies of any outside organization. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Click here for previous Paul Burri columns. Follow Paul Burri on Twitter: @BronxPaul.
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