End of the line for the robot

If you hope to make a connection with the member of your family who passed to the other side while waiting for us to answer their call, please press ''four''. If you want to speak to a real live human being please do not hold your breath, because the latter is in extremely short supply on the telephone network these days.

On the other hand, if you have a very high tolerance threshold, you may wish to stay on the line and listen to a very scratchy recording of Greensleeves, our background selection for this and every other month.

Sound even vaguely familiar? I imagine so, since these days the ultimate definition of jackpot success is not getting five numbers out of six on the national lottery, but selecting the combination of telephone digits which may actually link you with a fellow member of humanity.

Just possibly some shiny young graduate from the College of Post Millennium Communication has managed to persuade corporate Scotland that potential and existing customers would find it comforting and modern to deal with the company on a purely press-button basis. She or he has lied.

There is nothing less enticing than making a business call in order to be connected straightway to a robotic lunatic. Excuse me. Strike straightway. You will in fact hang on for many minutes and more before the robot can set aside filing its nails long enough to refer you to another metallic voice.

What the robot does not understand - no malice here, what can you expect from the offspring of an absentee

scientist? - is that we have long been told it is good to talk.

In fact, we really, really want to talk. To just about any real person left on the end of a line.

This is no longer possible in office hours. You can dial music. You can re-take your Quali via a series of button options. Or you can discourse via the ubiquitous voice mail. What most usually follows the latter option is that voice mail shall speak unto voice mail. The chances of their owners connecting are minimal.

I speak here from no little experience. In evidence for the prosecution let me cite the example of the British Broadcasting Corporation, an organisation which bends the knee to no other in its enthusiasm for new-tech. I can reach just about anybody in the Beeb via voice mail. Getting them to speak back is trickier.

Same deal with internal E-Mail. All God's BBC chillun now have E-Mail. And most of them find it less time-consuming to write their message to just about everybody on the same network.

Check the mail and you'll find a letter sent exclusively to you and 300 other intimate correspondents. By the time you've scrolled to the Ws, you realise you're late for lunch. A much more fun activity all round.

Even so, the UK is not yet the worst. Last week I spent some time in New York. For convenience (Hah!) I purchased a phone card on day one.

Big mistake. Having made fruitless attempts to shake down its purchasing power, I noted, in very small print, the number of its customer service department. I rang.

It rang. Finally, sometime just before sunset, it answered. Then it played me some music to soothe the savage breast of the incandescent traveller. Finally, an almost real voice inquired as to how it could help me. Could you maybe connect me to just one of the calls I'm trying to make on your not cheap credit call card, I whined.

They played me some music. Then they took lots of numerical detail. Then they paused for quite a while. The pause was punctuated by many announcements.

Thank you for calling the ACE Phone Company. All our lines are busy right now, but an operative will be with you shortly. More music. Thank you for calling, we want you to know how valuable your call is to us, and we will give it our full attention. More music. And then - a split second from apoplexy - a real voice returns: Thank you for calling the ACE Phone Company how may I help you? Aaaargh.

There was more, but let me not insist that you intrude upon private grief. Suffice it to say that when I finally found the name of the company service manager, and was put on very lengthy hold for his input, the phone company contrived to send me back to vocal square one.

After which, as they knew I surely would, I left the booth and took to drink instead.

It is time, fellow victims, that we took on the telephonic robots. It is time we railed against canned music, multi-button options, and smoothie-chops operators whose saccharine insincerity is a proven factor in premature strokes and heart attacks.

It is time, too, to go to war on those other electronic visigoths, the senders of nocturnal cold faxes. Many of us now have domestic phone/faxes. Little did we know that this would propel us into fax

directories. Little did we know that the rest of our unnatural lives would be blighted by the unsolicited attentions of kitchen and double-glazing salespersons at 3.19am.

When the telephone rings at that hour you are entitled to suppose that there is a medical emergency with your nearest and ancient dearest.

You are also entitled to want to kill the caller when you find this in not, in fact, the case - except that they have cunningly withheld their number.

I have made myself a promise. Life is too short to converse with robots.

Electronic voices requesting me to press one, two, three, or six will find themselves hung up on. Those persons only available by voice mail will not be conversed with.

Through-the-night salespersons will be tracked down and given a considerable piece of what's left of the mind. Owners of seedy holding tapes will be strangled with them.

Anyone who suggests I have a nice day after spending 20 long minutes of it in a queue for a civil word better go into hiding now.