i cannot stress enough the amount of trial and error that learning this entails
interestingly, you also learn a lot about how much somebody can annoy You before You try to physically kill Them -- and, if you grow as a person in a healthy way, experiencing this with siblings can teach you how to not let people annoy you most of the time
and there are other lessons. One time i needed an extradited passport from the American Embassy in England [because they took mine away when i arrived at Heathrow airport, stranding me nearly broke in England all summer and forcing me to do circus performance on the streets for enough money to survive, but that's another post]
Anyway they made me jump through crazy hoops, and one was the Embassy said even though i was THERE IN PERSON after having waited in line for more than two hours to make an appointment, they could not make me an appointment in person, and i had to use their website to make the appointment or, they said, i could call to make the appointment but warned that the phone call would not be a good way to do it.
Well, the website had clearly been created by someone's nephew in 1995, and was so bad it was literally impossible to use, so i called. The person who answered told me they were unable to make an appointment by phone and that i had to use the website. They did not care that i had tried and was unable. I said "I was told at the embassy that i could call to make an appointment" to which they simply repeated that they were unable to make appointments over the phone.
At first i was sooooo frustrated, but then as they were telling me for the 3rd time that they were unable to make appointments by phone, i felt a wave of familiarity wash over me. This person was doing the same thing my siblings and i used to do to each other, and there was no way they were better at it than my siblings had been. Also, as a low ranking public facing bureaucrat, as long as i was polite and calm, they were NOT ALLOWED to hang up on me.
So i settled into the familiar game - with a cheerful and stupid tone of voice, i said "But i was told i could call to make an appointment"
"I'm sorry, but we are unable to make appointments over the phone"
Filling my soul with the kind of mindless patience that lets you torment a sibling past their breaking point simply because you have an entire day of nothing ahead of you to fill, i repeated brightly "but i was told i could call to make an appointment"
after about our sixth cycle of this, they said "let me put you on hold" and then hung up on me - i am absolutely certain this was done on purpose in a way to create plausible deniability
As i hit redial, i remember actually thinking how my siblings were far more diabolical adversaries in games like this, how our torturous childhood interactions was a baptism by fire that had perfectly prepared me for this exact moment.
This person did have a job, they HAD to answer the phone when i re-dialed the number, and as soon as they did i said "hello, i think we must have been accidentally disconnected -- i was told i could call to make an appointment?"
I was full prepared to, in the exact same brightly stupid tone of voice every time, repeat myself for literal hours. But only a couple minutes later, they cracked and made me my appointment. In that moment, it felt like all my sibling torture of each other growing up had been preparation for dealing with life, like wolf pups playing tag to practice hunting.
