Stung by a Robot's Scorn

I have an account that allows me to buy an audio book each month and usually I buy mystery novels which I listen to while cleaning the bath and doing the ironing and generally trying once every four weeks to keep filth and chaos at bay.

But this month, having heard someone on the radio say that they'd read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire several times and found themselves spotting parallels with events in Washington on a daily basis, I decided to choose the audio version of that book instead.

As the audio version turned out to come in at over 100 hours (maybe even over 200 hours?) of listening, our house was going to be miraculously clean this month, our clothes miraculously crisp and smooth. That is, if I hadn't realised rather quickly - well actually not that quickly, several hours in, to be truthful - that listening to something that dense entails then having to search out large chunks of the written text in order to read it over and absorb everything in it properly.

And, once I'd made that realisation, I decided I might as well wait until I have time to read the book itself - at which point, I returned the audio book to the firm from which I buy my audio books.

The return went without a hitch and about ten seconds later I received an email confirming that things had gone smoothly and that I now had a credit to my name.

But then came the sting - the electronic sneer, the yeah-we-saw-how-you-were-trying-to-pretend-you-were-an-intellectual-but-couldn't-cut-the-mustard-you-never-fooled-us-we-know-your-type-exactly moment. For the email, which began, "We would like to inform you that your return of Gibbon's Decline and Fall has gone through successfully", ended, "and here are some crime thrillers and mysteries that we think you might like to chose instead."

What is that mocking sound I hear in the distance? I think it may be digital laughter. I was hoping that  that was a thing of the future, but it seems it's a thing of right now.