Maeve wanted to throttle him. Then kill him. Then bring him back to life so she could kill him again. She had worked in call centres for ten years, and would never treat a customer the way he’d been treating her Mother for the past thirty minutes.

Maeve listened on speaker phone as he chewed, and sighed, and yawned his way through their stilted exchange, the purpose of which was to decipher which phone service the disconnection notice she’d just received was referring to.

‘All of your services.’

‘No, I have two separate accounts, one is for my home phone and one is for my mobile. Which one is in danger of being cut off?’

‘Can’t tell you that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Private information.’

‘I just answered all of your security questions.’

‘So?’

‘Alright, I’ll give you a number, and you tell me whether this bill refers to it…’

Maeve’s mother gave him her mobile number.

‘Yeah that’s it.’

‘Thank you. Is my payment arrangement still in place?’

‘Expired.’

‘Can I enter into a new one?’

‘What do you mean?’

Maeve saw her mother’s hand start to shake.

‘May I start a new arrangement?’

‘How much?’

Maeve’s mother offered a figure.

‘Won’t work.’

‘Okay, could you suggest an amount?’

‘Six hundred a fortnight.’

‘Okay.’

Without bothering to acknowledge this, the operator launched into the terms and conditions of the new arrangement, in a monotone that had Maeve and her mother wondering how long either of them would manage to stay conscious.

‘Do you agree, or not?’

‘I agree.’

Silence. Maeve saw a tear working its way down her mother’s face. A tingling started behind Maeve’s neck and worked its way up to her head. 

‘Could I please speak to a manager?’

‘This IS Credit Management, I’m the only one you can speak to.’

‘You have no supervisor?’

‘I don’t feel like escalating your call.’

‘Okay then. I’ll call the main number and have them put me through.’

‘Fine.’

Maeve’s mother hung up, but not before she heard the operator’s muttered assessment of her character.

‘Stupid bitch.’

Maeve’s mother burst unto tears. The tingling in Maeve’s head had turned into an itch, and there was only one way of relieving it. Maeve took down the lanyard that was hanging on her bedroom door and put it on. She looked down at the ID card that it was holding.

Marris Leone, Call Quality Assessor.

She knew where the call centre was – he’d unwittingly gifted it to her – and all it took to gain entry into the building was a smile and a confident wave.

‘Oh yes,’ said the lovely training manager, Trisha, ‘we have the conference room all set up for you.’

‘Great,’ said Maeve. ‘I thought I’d start by picking an employee at random from the call recordings and bringing them in alone to test them, then speak to each team as a whole about their results.’

Trisha,  a firm but fair person who would normally quite rightly question the ethics of such a method, nodded. ‘No worries.’

Maeve requested that mornings recordings, specifically those from nine a.m to nine forty five a.m, and after overhearing a lot of exemplary calls, she arrived at the dud she was looking for. She dialled Trish’s extension.

‘Could you send Russell in, please?’

‘Sure.’

He looked pretty much as Maeve had expected him to – stiff, cold, a get it done swagger. His management-targeted smile was about as genuine as one worn by a ninety year old being trolleyed in for an anysthesia-free colonoscopy.

‘Sit,’ said Maeve.

Russell wasn’t smiling by the time Maeve was done with him. She held a mirror to his soul, forcing him to see himself as Maeve, and innumerable other customers no doubt, saw him, with a little extra spice thrown in.

Then she called in the others. One by one, five teams of people, as well as managers, filed in, and gave Russell their honest opinion of him.

‘Rude.’

‘Ugly.’

‘Creepy.’

‘Conceited.’

‘Ladies,’ Maeve asked, ‘would you let this man anywhere near you?’

‘No,’ came the collective response.

‘Gentlemen, would you invite this guy to after work drinks?’

‘Not any more,’ the guys chanted in unison.

Maeve finished the session by having the groups point and shoot insults at Russell until he burst into tears and ran out of the building. 

Maeve wondered on the train journey home whether she’d gone too far.

‘Nah.’