When you phone a big company these days, you’re lost before you start. You’re presented with half a dozen options, but not the one you want: which is to talk to a fellow human being about whatever’s on your mind. It seems like there’s no way into the organisation... only a labyrinth of corridors and connecting doors, which allow you to be shunted from one place to another without actually getting anywhere. You get a couple of minutes of tinny music, before an unseen hand pulls the plug. You’re cast adrift once again, left holding a phone that’s connecting you to nobody. If there’s no way into the organisation, there’s certainly a way out...

The strategy seems to be ‘customer disorientation’. Phoning a business these days is like being blindfolded by Mafia hoodlums and driven to some secret destination. Big business wants to practise ‘customer care’ - managers go to seminars and everything - but few of them know what customer care actually means. I know what it doesn’t mean: being connected to someone in a call centre in Mumbai.

I went to see Dave today. He’s a garage mechanic who works for himself and by himself, in a lock-up workshop. I can call in for a quick chat about whatever’s wrong with my car (my dismal record of maintenance ensures there’s always something). He may be under a car on the ramp, or down in the inspection pit, or, as yesterday, catching up with his paperwork in his tiny ‘office’. Before I’d even described what was the problem with the car, he’d noticed that one of my brake lights had gone, taken out the dud bulb and put in a new one. “That front tyre needs some air”, he said, so he pumped it up as he talked.

I needed a new exhaust too: something that I had worked out for myself, since my Vauxhall Astra sounded like a sports car... but without the corresponding surge of sports car performance.

There are hundreds of garages closer to my home than Dave’s. Dave works in town, but it’s not my home town any more. It’s two hours drive away. I take my car to Dave because he’s cheerful and he doesn’t give me a hard time for letting my car get into such a state; I trust him to replace only the parts that need replacing and charge what the job is worth. Best of all, he says what you want to hear: “I can fix it. Come back at five o’clock”. And when the dread day approaches, when the repairs are costing more than the car is worth, he’ll try to stop you throwing good money after bad, and suggest you keep an eye on the ‘Cars for sale’ section of the local newspaper. “Truthfully?”, he’ll say, if pressed, “Your car is fucked”.

Dave has no baffling phone system to make customers weep in impotent frustration. If he’s near the phone, he’ll pick it up; if he’s down the inspection pit, he won’t... and you’ll have to phone back a bit later. But you don’t have to speak to some bored receptionist, or listen while a disembodied voice gives you a long list of options, and numbers to press. You get Dave himself, a damn good mechanic who wipes the grease from his hands before he picks up the phone. “I can do the job Tuesday”, he’ll say.

Or you can call round and he’ll be there... unless he’s nipped out for a sandwich. The modern world has passed him by, some might say (there’s no concession to comfort in the creative chaos of his workshop), but he’s right up-to-date with his notions of ‘customer care’. Except that it isn’t ‘customer care’ at all. I don’t imagine he’s attended any seminars on the subject; he’s just available, during the advertised hours, to the people who want to get their car fixed, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a smile on his face.

You’re not lost, after all. You know where you are with Dave.