Hold music, and the lie of ‘your call is important’

If my call were important it would be answered. That is what importance means. Instead my call is held, and while it is held I am played a loop of eleven seconds of a saxophone that someone recorded in 2003 and never, ever listened back to.

Every ninety seconds a voice interrupts the saxophone to tell me that my call is important, and that I can also visit the website, where, for the record, I started, and where the website told me to call.

Forty minutes. I made lunch. I ate lunch. I washed up. At forty-one minutes a human answered and I was so startled that I forgot the question. We were both embarrassed. I hung up. I will call again tomorrow, with the question written on a card, like a hostage.