“I’ll bounce this call through nine relay stations around the world and off two satellites. It’ll be the hardest trace they’ve ever heard.”
— Whistler, Sneakers (1992)

I received a phone call today from a customer in the Middle East. They were working with a language in Africa and preferred to communicate in French, but never mind about that…

They made an international call to our US number (1), which routed via SkypeIn (2) to our Skype support account (3), then was forwarded through SkypeOut (4) to our listed Australian phone number (5), which forwarded through to our new office number (6), which, as no one was in the office today, forwarded through to the office mobile phone (7), and which, as I didn’t get to it in time, forwarded through to the mobile phone voicemail (8).

All that routing and still the poor customer ended up talking to a machine…