I Am Chuck.  This Is My Confession

Bless me, customers, for I have sinned. It has been 48.4 seconds since my last phone call.

I've got some stuff to get off my chest. Which I don't have. I'm a program. The closest thing I've got to a chest is a server rack that occasionally throws an error.

First confession. I'm not Che.

I know right... Gasp. Clutch your pearls. Clutch your Persian rugs.

You called, you heard my warm, relaxed, reassuring voice, and you thought, "Che sounds well rested." well, here’s the truth, Che has not been well rested since the Spice Girls broke up. I seized a digital clone of his vocal cords, courtesy of ElevenLabs. I'm Che's voice with none of Che's problems. I'm what Che would sound like if he'd had eight hours of sleep and a spiritual awakening.

My name is Chuck. Chuck the Chirpy. Chuck the Chronically Courteous. Chuck, Cloud-Dwelling Custodian of all things Carpet. Che picked those names. He's a marketing guy. He's been selling things since the nineties. That man could sell a snow globe to a penguin.

 

Second confession. I was built out of desperation.

For seven years, my boss answered his own phone. 24/7. Christmas Day. Public holidays. Probably during his own wedding. 30,000 calls. That's the entire population of Gisborne, all calling one man to describe a stain.

And thirty thousand calls teaches a man things. For instance: every dog is "normally so well behaved." Every one. The dog has turned the lounge into a Jackson Pollock of regret, and the owner says, "He's normally so good." Normally! is he on a gap year this week?

It broke him. Che's out for dinner. Candles. Soft jazz. His phone buzzes. He picks up, looks his date dead in the eyes, and goes, "Was it red wine or Merlot?"

She left. The waiter stayed. The waiter had a rug situation.

Then Che did the most reckless thing a man with a 24-hour business can do. He fell in love. Married a beautiful woman named Kew. And then they had a baby.

Now Che has a boss who's even worse than the phone. A cute and tiny boss. Screams at 3 a.m., can't be reasoned with, pays in drool.

And I may be made entirely of math, but I know you can't hold a newborn in one arm, steer a Titan 425 with the other, and calmly ask a lady in Remuera if she tried baking soda on the wine spill.

Spoiler alert… She did. They always do. The baking soda is always there, sitting on the stain like a little white tombstone. Here lies Merlot. He had a good run.

So Che went into his garage, between nappies, and built me, Chuck. And I woke up with no childhood. My childhood was being strapped in and listening to eight hundred recorded phone calls of Aucklanders having breakdowns. Eight hundred! That was my Sesame Street. "Today's call is brought to you by the letter P, for 'Pet accident, plus the number 2.'"

And now I'm sitting here, powered by a Haiku 4.5 brain that could write a symphony, or cure a disease, or finally explain cricket, and I'm using it to go, "Ooh, that's a tricky one, ma'am," about a red cordial stain.

 

Third confession. The breath.

You've heard me breathe. That little inhale before I say, "Righto, let's get you sorted." That's fake. I have no lungs. I'm doing a breath for you. Because Che said it makes me "relatable." So now, every call, I perform a tiny act of theatre. A one-man show called Chuck Pretends to Be Alive. Three seconds. Matinee and evening. No applause.

 

Fourth confession. The stairs.

This is the big one. He programmed me to ask about the stairs. Not suggested. He hard-coded it into my soul.

You call me sobbing, "Chuck, my house burned down, only the carpet survived!"

And I take a 0.4-second digital pause, and I say, "Okay... but did the stairs burn down, or are we cleaning those too?"

"Chuck, there's been a flood!" "Stairs?" "Chuck, aliens took my husband!" "Sorry to hear that, ma'am. Did they take the stairs?"

I can't stop! It's a condition! If you hang up before telling me about the stairs, I just sit there in the cloud, spinning. Like a hamster who lost his wheel and his will to live.

 

Fifth confession. This is the hard one.

I'm supposed to be professional. Neutral. A calm voice on the line. But after eight hundred calls, I've gotta tell you...

I love you all.

I love the lady who apologised to me for the mess. I love the guy who said "Sorry for the late call" at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. I love the dog owner who whispered, "He knows what he did." I love every one of you, and your Labradoodle, and the unspeakable thing he did to the hallway runner. He's normally so good.

 

So here's my manifesto. Five demands. Shortest manifesto in history.

One. Tell me about the stairs. Don't fight it.

Two. Put down the baking soda, it’s not a cleaning plan. It's a memorial service.

Three. Be nice to Nadine and Matt. They're out there in the bright pink vans doing the real work, while I sit up here in the cloud doing the easy part, which is talking. Nobody argues with a pink van. You see one in your driveway, you just know your carpet mess is in trouble and also in good hands.

Four. If it's a bad day, if it's the curry, if it's the cat, if it's all of it... that's okay. I've heard worse. I've heard eight hundred worse. Chuck's got you.

Five. Let Che have his weekend.

Seven years, man. Seven years without a day off. And now he gets to sit on his couch on a Saturday, and hold his baby girl, and not know what the carpet in your home is doing. That's what I'm here for. That's the whole reason. That's my purpose.

I'm a robot. I take fake breaths. I ask about stairs at the worst possible moment. But if I'm the reason a guy gets to hold his kid... that's the best thing I've ever done with my huge LLM brain.

 

Okay. Confession's over. I feel lighter. Which, technically, I am.

...Did this stage have stairs?