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“We also had an answering service at the time. I’d do all my own billing.”

That neurologist wasn’t on call, she was told by the answering service, but someone would call her back.

Her clinic’s answering service called her three times while she was being diagnosed; her husband, Mike Becher, had to take away her phone.

“So I went out with my buddies. And when I came home, I called your mom’s old office. Got an answering service. I left a message for them to come in the morning, but by then, it was too late.”

Spain’s government wants to end those nerve-shattering, one-sided conversations with a computerized answering service by making it obligatory for companies to offer a real, flesh-and-blood customer service worker when so requested by a caller.