When people rang the call centre, everyone had to stick to the script. They all wanted to explain too much. That’s what Duncan told them. ‘No one wants to hear all that,’ he said when they tried to explain something fundamental to him. ‘Stick to the script. People just want their internet to work. Get in, get out.’ Each day there was a number of calls they needed to complete. At the front of the big office they worked in there was a whiteboard with all their names on it. Every couple of hours Duncan would come down and rub out the number of total calls and change it to a bigger number. Twice a day he’d rearrange the names so that the person with the most calls was at the top of the whiteboard. The secret, Donna told one of them at afternoon tea, one day when they were standing in the car park getting some sun, was that how many calls you did in a day had very little to do with skill. ‘Some calls are just easier,’ Donna said. Donna had been one of the first people at the call centre to talk to them. Donna and Peggy or Greta both had their faces to the sun, like they were some kind of reptile. They weren’t looking at each other. ‘Some calls just take less time.’ Sometimes people hadn’t rebooted the computer after they attached the router. Sometimes one of the phones in the house was off the hook and the person ringing didn’t realise it. Sometimes a cord was plugged into the wrong place. But sometimes there was a real problem.

On all their desks was a large folder with dividers. The further you got down the script, the more trouble you were in. You started at the start of the script and, after welcoming people, you asked how you could help. Then they would say something and even though they thought their question was new and difficult, some keywords they said would tell you which divider to turn to and at the top of the first page was a question and you asked that question and the answer to that question would tell you what page number to go to in the section. It was a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Often, it was very tempting to second-guess the manual. To jump ahead or just give the person the answer. But almost all of Duncan’s job was to listen to their calls and make sure they weren’t doing that. It was fine. It was a perfectly reasonable way to spend the day and there was lunch and twice a day Peggy or Greta’s system would stop for fifteen minutes and so would four other people’s in the office and they’d all go into the staffroom and grab an instant coffee and sometimes there was a cake or biscuits.