Bureaucracy

"I do not see your counsel in insisting that we must 'call' these doctors. They are neither friends of yours nor do you speak of them as if they are of any great use. Wherefore, then, must we spend our day in such tiresome toil."
"I told you, they aren't doctors. They're...they're like merchants who work with the doctors."
"Ha! Mere merchants? I would beat them with the flat of my sword and send them weeping back to their own squalid houses. But yes, you have told me that you are too peaceable for my warlike deeds."
"Yes, Caesar, we don't really do that anymore."
"Now, you have said that these merchants are distressed about your accounts?"
"Um, sort of. Their last letter was confusing."
"These merchants must be foolish folk indeed, to waste the strength of the messenger and the price of parchment by sending you an unintelligible epistle."
"I agree, Caesar."
"Please select 1 for English, II for Spanish."
"Those are the languages of Britain and Hispania, by the way. Or at least, eventually."
"Ah, I conquered both of those barbaric lands and made them provinces of almighty Rome."
"Yes, we know. You wrote all about it. In third person."
"Caesar DID make many great victories in the name of the Roman people and their senate."
"Yes."
"If you are an employer calling about the small business marketplace, press I. If you have an existing account or wish to file an appeal, press II. If you are a navigator, press III."
"Why then are ship's captains so singularly recognized?"
"If you are a broker, please press IV."
"We want to press II."
"Must we file an appeal? Need we to call Marcus Tullius?"
"If you are calling to begin an application, press I. If you are calling about an application in progress, press II."
"Methinks that word has changed its sense since my days."
"You're right, Caesar."
"I grow weary of this tedium. Slave-woman! Desist your questions and fetch your master, for this man is a friend of the Caesar and Imperator of Rome!"
"Please enter your date of birth, using a II digit day, II digit month, and IV digit year."
"Could she not hear me?"
"No, she can't."
"By the gods, it surely has been more than two milennia and a score since the founding of the city. Why, it is nearly five hundred years past that mark!"
"Umm...we compute that a little differently now."
"And what, may I ask, was wrong with the old way of reckoning?"
"Please enter your nine digit social security number."
"Why yes, we also were each born with a number in Rome."
"I know. And yours make more sense than ours."
"Please hold for the next available agent."
"Are you certain they cannot hear me? For surely, I would threaten them with disembowelment."
"Your wait time may exceed XV minutes..."
"By the gods...I'm going to go lay siege to a town."