Another answerphone tale.
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This is an automated response to your call. Thank you for calling Myer-Truelove on /beat/ December /beat/ 25th! Your comments on /beat/ unwanted item /beat/ have been received and are being dealt with by our consumer affairs department. Unfortunately the office is closed today, and we hope to get back to you shortly. Calls may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.
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This is an automated response to your call. Thank you for calling Myer-Truelove on /beat/ December /beat/ 26th! Your comments on /beat/ rubbish you keep sending me /beat/ have been received and are being dealt with by our consumer affairs department. Unfortunately the office is closed today, and we hope to get back to you shortly. Calls may be recorded for quality assurance purposes.
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Hello, Ellie here from Myer-Truelove consumer affairs; call for Mr Smith, calling on the 27th. Yes, we do employ humans! I can quite understand your frustration at only getting recorded messages when you call, and in response. Unfortunately, the office was closed for the bank holidays on the first days of Christmas. Of the thousands of transactions undertaken by this company only a few have issues raised by our customers, and they always receive our undivided attention. If you would like to send back the unwanted items you will be credited in full for the amount deducted from your account. We value your custom!
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Hello, Ellie here again from Myer-Truelove. Mr Smith, I sincerely apologise for the issues you have been experiencing, though yours is unusual as you will appreciate. I realise you have no experience in transporting livestock, and when we just asked you to return the birds yesterday it seemed a little thoughtless. I hadn’t realised they were alive in fact. We will contact you in the next few days and arrange for the unwanted items to be picked up by a livestock carrier specialist. In the meantime if you could keep them fed and watered we would be really grateful. As a goodwill gesture senior management have agreed that you can keep the pear trees, but not the partridges.
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Hello, Mr Smith? What can I say? I really sincerely apologise for the continuing problem. It has been tracked down to a bug in the dispatch centre server in Bracknell. As a result, since the first day of Christmas, Myer-Truelove have sent to you various birds: I believe today's shipment included four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle doves and yet another partridge in a pear tree. Let me assure you we have our best brains working on it even though it’s still the holiday. I can understand your comment that you are not running a ruddy zoo.
We have contacted the RSPCA and they recommend that the French hens are kept separate from the turtle doves and calling birds, as they can attack without warning. The partridges are docile and will most probably stay in their pear trees, so no worries there. We will of course reimburse you for reasonable costs incurred in continuing to look after the birds.
Purely as a gesture of goodwill we have today dispatched a lovely gold ring from our Serenity range, entirely free, for your good lady wife.
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Mr Smith. Oh dear, I am so sorry about all this. Five gold rings! We did indeed only mean to send one ring and would be so grateful if you could return the other four when the birds are collected. Similarly I note that yet another batch of birds has arrived adding insult to injury. Unfortunately we cannot let the deliverer take away the unordered items as we do not have a contract with them for that. We are arranging a special collection, but at this time of the year – well, you know how things are!
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Yes, Mr Smith, I am aware that your original order was for one organic goose, and I am truly sorry that you have today finally received six. And that they are alive when you clearly specified oven ready. If you now want to return all six that’s absolutely fine. Though I can confirm they are organic. I suppose you wanted it for Christmas dinner though. By all means keep the eggs you say they are a-laying. Our records show that along with all the livestock - sent yet again! - we also mistakenly dispatched a further set of gold rings, though I notice you did not mention receiving them in your message. We also need these back, I’m afraid.
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It’s Ellie again. Well, it's the eighth day of Christmas already and first of all let me wish you a happy new year, Mr Smith! Though I expect you are none too happy at the moment, especially… well… getting the swans must have been particularly distressing to you and your good lady wife. Especially if you had been up celebrating. Probably the swans weren’t too chuffed either. (Just my little joke!) Lucky you have the pool.
As it happens, I was indeed aware that swans are the property of the Queen. I imagine that if returned unharmed this shouldn’t be a problem, but I’m checking with our legal department just in case. I hope the feedstock we sent arrived safely.
I’m grateful to you for counting up all the animals received to date. 69 tallies exactly with our despatch records. At least that part of the software is working correctly! You don’t mention the 15 gold rings….
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Oh dear, Mr Smith: things do seem to be getting rather out of hand. The problem has spread to the bookings management software of Myer-Truelove Recruitment, our sister staff agency at Virginia Water. That probably explains the milkmaids who arrived this morning at 6:00am. I appreciate how inconvenient that must have been, and can only apologise again. Their normal start time is before dawn, I’m afraid: you’re lucky it’s not the summer. Presumably you don’t have cows? Not yet anyway! My little joke again! But see what they can do around the house, or maybe some gardening?
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Another lot of milkmaids? It isn’t your week, is it Mr Smith? I have tried contacting my colleagues at Myer-Truelove Recruitment – unfortunately they are closed today with an extended New Year break.
Now. The ladies dancing are a complete mystery. I will try and get back to you later on that. Your garden must look quite a sight now with over a hundred of our feathered friends. Please try and utilise the milkmaids: it occurs to me they no doubt have some training in other areas of animal husbandry and could help with the poultry. I wonder if you would mind asking them to fill in their timesheets each day? We won’t charge you but we need it for our records.
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Mr Smith, some good news at last! Our IT manager believes he has tracked down the problem to a particularly nasty virus implanted by hackers in our main server. Unfortunately, to cure the problem will mean taking down the server and reinstalling all software from scratch. This could take a few days, but we will keep you up to date with the latest. Until it is solved you will continue to receive seven swans, six geese, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree - 23 birds each day in all. And five gold rings – please keep them safely. The bug has also deleted the instructions to the company collecting the items from you. I have now called them directly. Hopefully they will be there to collect shortly.
I have solved the mystery of the dancing ladies. They were hired by Myer-Truelove Recruitment as part of a ballroom dancing display team drawn from impoverished members of the former Rumanian nobility. The computer glitch means they were sent to you instead of to the New Year’s parade in London. You probably also have some of the lords with you by now – their partners. The rest of the team has been held up by fog at Frankfurt, they are trying to get on later flights and should arrive over the next two days.
I’m glad to hear the milkmaids have been filling in their time well. So, there are now enough of them to set up two soccer teams complete with subs, are there? I’m glad you enjoyed being the referee – pity about the mud, but it didn’t seem to bother you too much, or them!
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Mr Smith, how clever of you to set up your own impromptu pageant locally! It must have cheered up a dark winter’s day in Surbiton no end! You seem to have made good use of the milkmaids’ time in decorating the floats: ‘Leda and the swan’ with 30 swans and even more geese must have been spectacular, and the mud wrestling tableau sounds inspired! Not to mention the 66-strong aristocratic formation dancing team doing the military two-step down the High Street!
I bet your newer arrivals really topped off a fantastic display, what with the Kodushu Zen Drummers drumming and the Dagenham Girl Pipers piping. More wrong bookings thanks to that computer glitch, I’m afraid. Still, it seemed to turn out well - they really seem to have mucked in with the milkmaids! The finale sounds a hoot!
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Well, Mr Smith, finally it’s all over and it must seem very quiet in Sebastopol Avenue, with all the animals gone, and no more drummers drumming or pipers piping. I’m glad the pick up went smoothly. I hear there were some tearful farewells, and that you are welcome any time in Transylvania and Kyoto. Or indeed Dagenham.
Just one thing. I think you may have overlooked the gold rings that were despatched. They did not come back with the other items. You’ll remember that purely as a gesture of goodwill, we let you keep all the pear trees, and I am glad to hear you are going to set up an orchard as a going concern. And as we said, do keep one gold ring for your wife. Perhaps it will help you to get back together again: though it sounds like you are having a good time with the milkmaids that chose to stay on. But we really do need the other 39 rings back.
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Mr Smith?
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Mr Smith? Are you busy, Mr Smith?
