Excerpted from The Employee Handbook of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, Chapter Forty-Three: Complaints Department, Subheading: History, Page 900,412
The Complaints Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation has a long and illustrious history. Indeed, without the Complaints Department, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation would be inundated with complaints and cease to exist.
The first complaint for the Corporation was registered roughly five minutes after the production of its first product, a state-of-the-art cybernetically-enhanced toaster. In fact, the complaint came from the toaster itself, which asked why it had been programmed to set itself on fire one minute after its warranty expired. The complaint was resolved by re-programming the toaster to stop asking questions.
At first, the Complaints Department was merely one room in the back of the Tiny Screws Division. Over the course of three months, it expanded to the point where it occupied all the major land masses of three inner planets of the Sirius Tau system.
In fact, the Complaints Department is the only profitable division of the Corporation, thanks to an innovative system developed by its founder, Sirius Nottqytt. In order to file a complaint, customers are required to call a dedicated Sub-Etha channel which charges them five Altairan dollars a minute. The channel is designed to keep customers on hold for a minimum of two hours with the result that the majority of customers will give up and never manage to file a complaint at all. Those who do get through are put through a complex series of menus and options, half of which are dead ends. This ensures that, by the time their complaint is filed, the cost of any repairs or refunds will have been paid for by the charges for the call.
To be continued...