“We are sorry. The humanoid you have reached is no longer….”

Frederica Mathewes-Green writes a screamingly, hair-pullingly funny article about her failed effort to book a flight for herself and her family. We've all been there: the extremely nice Indian phone operator who never quite understands your American English; the fact that, when dealing with a big company, every employee has different ideas about corporate policy; and the hollow fiction of the "contact us" email addresses or forms, that just send computerized answers back your way. It's all there. There's also a useful link to Get Human, a website set up to help us with the difficulties of deal with modern corporate phone systems.