A recording making the rounds features a former tech journalist trying to complete a simple action: Cancel Comcast service. The resulting back and forth is a doozy.

Ryan Block describes the lead-up to the call, which consisted of his wife’s attempts to cancel, and then his taking over. Including the non-recorded portion of the call, it’s a total of 20 minutes on the phone with the Comcast rep, increasingly desperate, attempting to save Block and his wife as a customer.

It shows an example of when a company gets too focused on certain metrics, and placing incentives on the wrong things. It also will likely keep them from ever becoming a customer again, which is another major negative.

Comcast claims it’s an anomaly, but current and former employees are saying otherwise. I doubt Comcast is directly training employees to be this aggressive, but through a combination of incentives, pay structure and internal messaging, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an arrangement that penalizes the employee for the number of customers who ultimately proceed with cancellation.