Comment:

One of the things I try to keep in mind, when I do customer service, is that I'm never seeing people at their best. No one calls up their cellphone provider because they're happy with their service and want to compliment us on a well-run machine. Even if they do, it's never the normal, pleasant interactions that stick in the mind - if you talk to 99 pleasantly forgettable people and one angry asshole, the scenario your brain records is the angry asshole.

I think that (in addition to low wages and shifting standards and expendability, of course) is one of the main reasons people in customer service jobs get emotionally burnt out so often, they become cynical about the idiots who must, surely, comprise the majority of the human race. Of course most people you encounter are angry idiots! You're at the end of an angry idiot filter!

Anyway, our first introduction to Patricia Hightower wasn't a particularly nice one, and I'm sure that's colouring the audience's perception of them just as surely as it's colouring Zoa and Lee's perception. Surely, Patricia has redeeming characteristics!

Perhaps at some point we'll see one.

Transcript:

---------------------------------------------------------------
0102 - 2167/07/06/12:36 - Lee Caldavera's apartment, living room
LC [data connection]: Incoming contact: Orb Twofeather.
LC: Oh, jeez, I'm getting a call.
Zoa: Permission to send and receive communication on your behalf?
LC: Please.
----------------------
OT [data connection]: Hi, Mzr. Caldavera, it's Orb Twofeather. Just thought I'd give you a heads up, there's been a change in school policy that might affect your plans for this semester.
Zoa [data connection]: Zoa here. You mean the school-administrators-take-possession-of-all-AI thing that was reversed after 21.34 seconds?
----------------------
OT [data connection]: What are you-
OT [data connection]: Oh. Oh, yeah, I see, that was... not how that was supposed to go. Patricia's not going to be happy.
Zoa [data connection]: Given what little I've seen of them, 'not happy' seems like an understatement.
----------------------
OT [data connection]: In my coworker's defense, they've been dealing with a lot of stress, and Mzr. Caldavera's situation is atypical.
Zoa [data connection]: Atypical enough to break the whole damn school for 21.34 seconds?
OT [data connection]: We'll see, I guess.
---------------------------------------------------------------