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i have a secret admirer.  

he - it could be a she but i prefer to think of him as a he, it sits well with my penchant for irony - calls me four times a day, sometimes five.  i'm sure there have been days when he got to six. 

adam - i like to think of him as an adam, it's a nice name and i'm convinced he's a lovely guy really, when you get to know him, and all the adams i've ever met have been nothing short of adorable - sits wired into his headset in front of a computer at vodafone headquarters in newbury and every two or three hours of every working day (and that includes saturdays!) he thinks of me and feels the urge to give me a call.  

clearly an urge that he can't resist.   

probably because he's got one of his bosses glowering over his shoulders and a target to reach.  because adam's admiration for me is - alas! - narrowly founded.  the narrow foundation adam's admiration rests on is a list on his computer screen of subscribers who have recently requested their pac code because they want to take their phone number elsewhere.  so something tells me it isn't admiration at all that's prompting young adam to phone me.  something is telling me that his boss, probably his boss fairly high up, possibly mr vodafone himself, has decided that people taking their pac and going elsewhere is something that can't be allowed to happen.  not without a fight.  not without an all-out assault.  not without a full-on campaign.  not without tackling them, wrestling them to the ground and if necessary beating them into submission.

i got my pac a bit over a week ago and to be honest i'm in no hurry.  so far, adam, or maybe he and his friend eric, or maybe there's a whole team of them taking it in turns, well, they've phoned me about sixty times.  could be seventy by now.  they never leave a message.  and i never answer the phone.  because i don't know who it is.  because they never leave a message.  

i started to worry and wonder whether i was being harassed by a stalker.  or by my ex.  (it's not likely, seeing my ex has been my ex for about eight years now, i know, but you can't rule it out, as you'd know if you knew my ex...) but it turns out it's not a nuisance caller at all, it's my own mobile service provider.  what joy.

how in the communication god's name they can imagine that bludgeoning their customers will endear us to them is not entirely obvious to me.  i have no cavil with vodafone.  and certainly not with adam.  (in fact, i almost have something of a quiet admiration for adam personally myself.  his tenacity is impressive.  if he goes about wooing his lovers the way he goes about wooing me he may well get himself killed by them in the process but his determination will never have been in doubt.  and for that alone he deserves some respect.)  no, i just want to try the iphone now, having waited for it since about 2002.  and i would have seen no reason not to at least consider staying or coming back at a later date when maybe O2 no longer have the exclusive.

but i reckon vodafone have gone and done it now.  i reckon they've pushed me over the edge.  and it's not an edge that's going to be easy to climb back up.  because let's face it: there are only two reasons why somebody would do this to you, relentlessly, systematically grind you down: either they are completely totally irrationally and - even if annoyingly then still, in essence, forgivably - in love with you.  and much as i like adam (in abstract terms: i've never met or spoken to him) i don't think somehow that that is the case.  which leaves me with the other explanation: they hold you in utter contempt: 'he wants to leave? keep phoning the bastard, ultimately he'll crack.'

seems vodafone (like my ex really) doesn't know me at all... 

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