During my time at Volvo in Duxford, I made frequent business trips to the corporate heartland of Gothenburg. I usually stayed at the Radisson, a hotel that catered to the brisk, efficient schedules of visiting executives. Because our meetings often started at the crack of dawn, I relied heavily on the hotel’s wake-up call service.
It was a standard, automated system: you’d speak your requested time into the phone, and the next morning, a computerized voice would chime, "This is your wake-up call." It was cold, functional, and perfectly Swedish.
One morning, after a particularly early set-up and a night of restless, fragmented sleep, the phone rang at 5:00 AM. I was in a foul mood—irritable, exhausted, and ready to lash out at the inanimate technology that was dragging me into the light.
I snatched up the receiver and, before the "machine" could even get a word out, I snarled into the mouthpiece: "Fuck off!!"
There was a long, horrifying silence. Then, instead of the expected robotic tone, a very small, very shocked female voice whispered back:
"Oh... I am so sorry, sir. I hope I didn't get your wake-up call wrong!"
I felt the blood drain from my face as I sat bolt upright in the dark. It turned out the automated system had gone on the blink overnight, and the front desk staff were manually calling every room to ensure the guests weren't late.
I spent the next several minutes in a state of profuse, stuttering apology, trying to explain that I wasn't actually a monster—just a man who had mistakenly declared war on a computer.
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