The complaint hotline for Coconut Palm brand coconut juice has recently been flooded with calls. Consumers who dial the line are spreading the word online with childlike glee: "I called on a whim, and someone actually answered!" "They're available 24/7!" "I dialed and it was a real number, so I hung up quickly." This 30-year-old beverage brand is facing its biggest customer service pressure ever, but not because of quality issues. It all stems from a detail many might never notice: Unlike some 400 hotlines that never connect, using a mobile number as the complaint line and having someone answer 24/7 is refreshingly straightforward in a business world often lacking sincerity. On Zhihu, this question has garnered over 4 million views, reflecting the increasingly boundless curiosity of Chinese intellectuals. Weibo users have shown their usual sensitivity to the bizarre, while Douban youth express their artistic concern. "The person who answered was an uncle, and we ended up chatting about everything from how to spot fakes to automated production lines, and even the weather in Haikou. He ended with 'Have a nice weekend,' like a childhood friend I hadn't seen in years." The world's boredom exceeds your imagination, and the viral trend has prompted more people to pick up their phones. Those who lost bets, argued with their wives, or scrolled through their contacts late at night with no one to comfort them. A girl from Guangzhou even said that when she and her college classmates went to the barbecue street on Nengyuan Road, they ordered a bottle of coconut juice among the ice-cold beers, and the mobile number on the bottle became their truth-or-dare challenge to liven up the drinking. Most people calling a complaint hotline expect some bureaucratic runaround. But when they call Coconut Palm, their lives might just need a little lubricant. Their intense curiosity has been met with unprecedented attention, and more and more people are pinning their hopes on this Pandora's box of a mobile number, thinking it might be the key to solving life's problems. Every detail from the island province has been imbued with a touch of romance. "When I was studying in Canada, my family and I lived like in different dimensions; when I was awake, they were always asleep. Once, I bought a 2.9 Canadian dollar coconut juice at a Chinese supermarket, dialed that mobile number, just to hear a voice from across the ocean." "The call quality sounded like a travel ad on the radio during traffic, and the static wasn't just noise—it was the rustling of coconut leaves in the wind, very soothing." In modern society, happy-go-lucky boys like Justin Bieber showing off their CK waistbands are increasingly rare; a mobile number should be more private than underwear color. But what kind of mental fortitude does it take to print a personal mobile number on packaging for a product selling hundreds of millions of units annually? Like the FBI warning at the start of a movie that everyone ignores, everyone has drunk Coconut Palm products, but not everyone notices the private mobile number starting with 139 printed on all its packaging. A colleague at Roadside Store, Ajin, said his first reaction upon spotting the number was: "I must have bought a fake." He didn't realize it might be the easiest mobile number he'd ever get in his life. Driven by his engineering-minded curiosity, Ajin decided to test the operator's style and script, dialed the number, and recorded the audio for us. The recording confirmed all the patterns netizens had noted: available 24/7, and no matter when or where, after enduring two cheesy ringtone tunes, you can get in direct contact with this mysterious figure. The person who answered was calm, a man in his forties or fifties, with polite responses, aside from his typical southern Mandarin accent. There was no noisy call-center background. If lucky, you might hear the occasional scooter horn or seafood market calls from Hainan's streets during the conversation. He said the mobile number has been on Coconut Palm's packaging for nearly 30 years. It's been part of the brand's entire growth history. Most serious calls are as dull as flat cola. Spending ten or twenty minutes usually clarifies the same thing: "This coconut juice tastes different from what I had before." "Sometimes it's just because they actually bought a counterfeit." Now you have a new way to tell: fake Coconut Palm products don't have this number on them. Image source: finance.qq.com (Tencent Finance) But the recent excessive enthusiasm from netizens has made him hope for a real complaint call. Of the two hotlines on the packaging, only this mobile number is online 24/7, because the staff handling the other 400 number clock out. This mobile number exists to ensure no consumer call is missed. For decades, he's been answering complaints and concerns from across the country, with the ringtone as the background music of his life. "There are two of us; when one sleeps, all calls are forwarded to the other's phone." Samuel Beckett would never have imagined that on China's Hainan Island, there really are two people like Estragon and Vladimir, whose daily job for decades is to man a non-existent counter, waiting for a call from Godot. Facing Jin Jin's clumsy business small talk, his most common reply is "It's all our duty," his voice clearly tired but still maintaining the patience expected of customer service. Not only does he answer every call, but he also replies to every text message. This is a position that never clocks out. At peak times, he answers over a hundred calls a day; even at three minutes per call, that's five hours of non-stop talking. When a local Hainan number becomes a psychological hotline for the sleepless and bored, the customer service rep has to endure the nation's emotional diarrhea around the clock, becoming an online tree hole for netizens to dump their emotional garbage. Now, the complaint hotline is no longer just that; this iron man has endured what no operator should. As the saying goes: When a smartphone becomes your whole life, your intelligence, mobility, and phone all suffer. Many speculate that someone willing to dedicate their intelligence, mobility, and phone to their career can only be the boss of Coconut Palm Group. Another theory suggests it's the personal performance art of the designer who has monopolized the coconut juice aesthetic for over a decade, since designers like to leave personal traces in their work. Even the notice at the Coconut Palm Group headquarters has the same vibe. But a loyal fan who has drunk Coconut Palm for twenty years says these two identities are actually one and the same. Since he's already juggling two roles, taking on a third fits the boss's style perfectly. A company must have absolute confidence in its product to put a mobile number on the packaging; otherwise, with annual sales of hundreds of millions of bottles, even a 0.01% complaint rate would have blown up that number long ago. In Coconut Palm's rugged corporate culture, this kind of inexplicable confidence runs through the brand's entire history. From packaging that looks like it's from a Macau royal casino to ads that could dominate Bilibili's meme sections without editing, Coconut Palm has won over all visual pioneers with its crude collage design, single-handedly keeping the academic purists at bay. Japanese "saturation" avant-garde designer Yui Takada praised the design as "great" on Twitter, enshrining the neighboring country's national juice in his solo exhibition. Many think Coconut Palm has refused any change for 30 years, while the design world fights over fashion's influence; Hainan's Coconut Palm stands alone, achieving special effects with a five-cent budget. The biggest change is just "30 years of persistence" becoming "31 years." Actually, before 2004, Coconut Palm's packaging had a designer. But our strongest impression of the brand is the aesthetic revolution sparked by its Word-document design school. Few know that behind the red, yellow, blue, and black Chinese kitsch pop style and the "drink it since childhood" marketing, the mobile number is their ultimate heritage with the most historical depth. Since the brand's creation during reform and opening-up, Coconut Palm's visual marketing investment has always been the lowest among beverage brands, yet no one has ever shaken its position in the coconut juice market. In 2016, when celebrity couples like Li, Xie, and Wen were hit by cheating scandals, Hainan Coconut Palm Group boldly stepped up to support their original intention: "People are sometimes fickle animals; what truly remains eternal, accompanying you with all its heart, is only us." Image source: Weibo Hainan Coconut Palm Group As the reform spring breeze blows, some feel the rain, while others just get wet. Three years later, our lives are still undergoing drastic changes under the tide of the times. What remains unchanged is the unwavering dedication on the other end of the line, day and night. So please stop harassing this operator hidden on the southern island; he shouldn't have to live in others' post-moment time. Visual: Anxiety Supervisor: bong oil -END-