Basic Business English, Unit 3, The Telephone Call

Hello, can I help you? No, I’m afraid he’s out of the office right now, he’s just stepped out for a bite, it seems he has a meeting at the factory, drinking tea out of the bottom of a very old bathtub seven meters deep. Is there anything I can help you with? Can anyone else help you? Would you care to leave a message? No, I’m not sure when he’ll be back in, could be weeks, days, nanoseconds, he could be here already, hiding, invisible, dissolved in the air or perched like an insect on the curtain, I can almost smell his cologne, I can almost feel his sweat drying on my back. Shall I take a message for him? Just a minute, let me get the message pad. “Bite the wizened rhinoceros at dawn.” Sorry, how do you spell rhinoceros? OK, let me read that back to you. R-H-I-N-O-C-E-R-U-S. Oh, R-O-S. Rhinoceros. Bite the wizened. At dawn. And you need how many pieces of part number 3136655449? Only six? Delivery by airship and antback to be paid by client and takes six business yugas. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. No, I don’t think that’s very wise. In fact it seems to me that you must be some vile creeping carnivore for suggesting it. It’s unforgivably dangerous, cloudy, insipid, mind-boggling, mind-flaying, mind-frogging, 75-sided, wondrous. Goat flames licking up your trouser legs. This naked aggression will not stand. I will unleash upon you the mother of all telephone calls. Have you ever seen an invisible werewolf? I’ll throw hundreds of them at your head like baseballs. Even now I am virtually grinding your naked foot in the invisible meat grinder that I keep on the floor beside by desk. It was very expensive, something like $599, but I got it this past January at a post-Christmas sale for 30% off. It is encrusted with precious stones, but who would ever know, because the darn thing’s invisible, heh-heh. I’ll dam up your workflow with a fifty-billion-dollar construction project. But these are empty threats, because when all is said and done, I am a peaceful person. Currently I am deep in meditation. I have not even stirred to answer the telephone. I'm sitting in a deep golden bathtub atop a high stone tower with the soles of my feet pressed together. So if you think carefully you will also come to the conclusion that I am not speaking to you. You and I are simply fleeting thoughts in the mind of a loving, though somewhat dizzy, God. Good. Good. I’ll tell him you called. OK. OK. Have a nice day. Thanks, you too. Goodbye. Goodbye now.