“But you’ll stay on the line, right? Don’t hang up!”

“I won’t hang up.”

“Good, because do you have any idea how long I’ve been listening to that horrible hold music? Three hours and forty-five minutes. I could have watched Titanic in the amount of time I’ve been on hold. No. That’s way too relaxing of an example. You know what I actually could have done in the amount of time I’ve been on hold? I could’ve brushed my teeth, gotten dressed, painted my toenails, waited for them to dry, gone down the block and ordered a bad bagel and the wrong coffee, gotten into my car and driven all the way from Brooklyn to the middle of Jersey in traffic so slow I nearly ripped my hair out. That’s how long I’ve been on hold!”

“Those were . . . extremely specific examples.”

“That’s because they weren’t examples. That’s literally everything I did while I was actually on hold.”

“I gathered that.”

“Okay. There. Here I am. I pulled off the road. Hopefully I don’t get axe murdered in this wasteland.”

“If you’re somewhere unsafe we can definitely—”

“No! No. Don’t you dare suggest we wait another minute. I’ve been on hold for a lifetime. I’m practically ninety years old now but I’m getting my laptop out and turning my hotspot on and we are fixing this website issue immediately.”

“All right . . . Do you want to start by telling me what the problem is?”

“Well, it’s just one huge problem! You know, I used Curio because someone recommended it to me. And because every other website-building service that I tried was awful. They all say that they’re user friendly and that no matter how little experience you have with that kind of thing, it’s easy to build your site. But they lie. They’re nothing but a hellscape. Literally my version of hell is forever building my website. Choosing between fonts and minutely different background colors for all eternity. H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.”

“I see.”

“Did you just laugh at me?”

“I laughed with you. You’re funny.”

“You know what’s not funny? My dumpster fire of a website. No, this is so much worse than a dumpster fire. It’s a garbage barge fire . . . Stop laughing, Cam.”

“Right. Sorry. Cal. My name is Cal. And I am here to help you. If you point me toward the issues your site is having, I promise we can fix them.”

“Well, for starters, it doesn’t work. The whole thing.”

“Okay. Can you give me your user ID? Once I get into your account, I should be able to help figure this out.”

“Oh. Sure. It’s, um, bigcojonesvera69.”

“Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that.”