The Eid phone call

If Eid began around the middle of this week, this is roughly the third day of it, and somewhere an agency phone is ringing with a client's name on the screen.

From the agency seat the call is a breach. The out-of-office is up. Everyone agreed that nothing moves until Sunday. The person who answers is standing in a relative's kitchen holding a plate, and they will say yes to whatever is asked, then spend the drive home rewriting a plan that was signed off a fortnight ago.

From the client seat the same call is the first quiet hour in about two months. No meetings. No forwarded threads. Nobody walking up to the desk with a different priority. They have finally read the plan properly, front to back, in one sitting, and they have found the thing that is wrong with it, which is the thing nobody had time to find in the room where it was presented.

So the call is not a client being inconsiderate. It is a review, arriving through the only door that was open.

Both readings are accurate, and neither seat can see the other one from where it is sitting. The agency hears a line being crossed. The client hears themselves being useful for the first time in weeks.

The accounts that last are the ones where somebody has said out loud which of the two this call is, and then put a time on Sunday against it, so the review still happens and the holiday still exists.