D'oh! D'oh!

I have just signed up with Dodo – a company so appallingly incompetent and ruthlessly cynical that I think it may actually be a sophisticated money-laundering operation with a small and unconvincing Telecommunications front, probably run out of a small office in a men’s toilet in the basement of a Hungry Jack’s. (Moral: Do not sign up with companies named after extinct animals. I should have learned this from my past experience with Giant Two-Toed Ground Sloth Mortgage Brokers.)

After expressing my dissatisfaction, Dodo put me through to a section called ‘Finance’, which is obviously Dodo code for ‘unleash second-rate Mafia Goon Impersonator onto the under-prepared and increasingly nervous customer so that we can keep all our money’.

What follows is my reconstruction of our conversation.

Me (cautiously optimistic): Hello, I’d like to get my money from Dodo refunded, please.

Goon (slow and menacing, yet somehow also stilted – similar to how Christopher Walken might sound if his acting career stalled and he had to take a second job as a Dodo telephone sales representative): Oh. (pause). Why would…you want…to do…that?

Me (faux-chirpy, foolishly expecting empathy from Goon): Well I purchased a wireless Internet card, and when I tried to install it, I found out that the password had been used.

Goon (switching to the “I am the Plenipotentiary of Total War” tone): So you… want another…

(gratuitously long pause, in my opinion) – password.

Me (helpfully seeking to redress misunderstanding): No, I would like my money back, please.

Goon: And why is…that? (Last word of Goon’s utterances invariably drips with scorn and half-heartedly repressed violence).

Me (in chipper, Gatsby-esque, “Well, isn’t it obvious, old chum?” voice): Because I am no longer confident that Dodo will be able to meet my requirements.

Goon (audibly ruffling his (presumably) irrelevant and/or pornographic sheaf of papers with his (presumably) terrifyingly strangle-hardened fingers¹ as he shifts his (no doubt) mean, pinhole-sized,² illiterate³ eyes lazily over them while (presumably) intricately picking his (no doubt) hideously misshapen nose (from his illicit and unsuccessful boxing career)⁴ and (quite possibly) eating its contents as well)⁵:

But according to our records, you signed a…contract with us.

Me (rapidly sensing lines of escape being cut off by part-time criminal): Yes. That’s true. But my experience over the past week suggests that these mistakes –

Goon (switching from his Walken impression to his “I’m the dumbest, and hence the most blissfully psychotic, member of the Corleone Family!” voice): Are you satisfied with the outcome of this call?

Me: What do you mean?

Goon: If you choose not to honour the contract that you have signed, then… (B I G – B L O O D Y – P A U S E, followed by Goon audibly shrugging a Cheops-sized pyramid of dandruff off both shoulders of his (presumably nylon-polyester blend) suit…well, that’s up to you.

Me (apprehensive): Uh, ‘well’ what?

Goon: Well, if you break the contract, and the service continues to be charged to your account…that’s your…choice. (The word “choice”, in this case, is pronounced like evil scientists in 1930s Hollywood/Universal horror films always utter the phrase “World Domination”).

Me (now confused): My choice to what?

Goon: To break the contract. And your contract is. For. Two. Years. (Pronounced as someone instigating a protection racket would pronounce the line: “Real nice store you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”)⁶

Me: Um –.

Goon: Thank you for calling Dodo.

¹ Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Unlike the above, this is not a genetic trait, and hence comfortably falls under the umbrella of ‘inappropriate behaviour.’

⁶ I think this sentence may be taken from Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought. Thanks, Steve. Don’t sue, eh?