Hold on World,
World hold on, it's gonna be alright
You're gonna see the light
Ah and when you're One, really One
Well you'll get things done like they've never been done
So hold on..................................John Lennon
I realize all companies and other whatevers have streamlined all of their peon jobs out of existence to maximize profits, but there are good ways and bad ways to do it. And though they have consultants and PR people who they employ to maximize customer retention, you'd think they'd realize they should try harder to minimize customer irritation. It could easily be done, but somehow these dipshits never seem to grasp the concept.
Hold music. You can't figure out how to accomplish what you need from them online, so you have to call them to try to speak to a real person. I've had to do this a lot lately. You'd think they'd be able to make it simple for the least tech savvy of us to "work with them", but no. So then you have to call and wait on hold for a representative of their beleaguered skeleton crew to help you, fully anticipating them to not be empowered with the process or the permission to help. The apprehension mounts as you're put on hold, and listen to aural excrement for God knows how long. I say to all of them, "For fuck's sake have better hold music!"
Usually it's some kind of light weight pop shit, the kind of stuff once called "elevator music" or Muzak. But do I now sense a trend of these companies not giving a shit even less than they used to by not updating or improving their hold "experience", even as their wait times get longer? It's as if they want to punish you for not doing your business online.
I recently had to call a hospital in Florida to check on my mother's condition. The phone system menu was bad enough--literally disconnecting me if I chose an option the system said to choose, but then the hold music sounded like the piano stylings of a three-toed sloth recorded on the built-in condenser mic of a Radio Shack cassette recorder from three rooms away. I am telling you that this is an absolutely accurate description. A few tentative faint notes, a few seconds of silence, a dissonant cluster in no way Thelonious Monk-esque, more noisy silence, rinse, repeat.
Some years ago the company I now work for bought out the old company, and the transition was a major cluster-fuck. They had thousands of irate customers calling, having to wait long periods of time on hold, and the hold music they used was this gloomy, scratchy sounding sludge that sounded like an old cassette found at a flea market. It was warbly and without treble other than tape hiss. I'm certain they lost millions of customers just because of that aural insult added to the injury of lost service, lost productivity, lost profit. Holy shit, somebody must have gotten fired for that. They did eventually change their hold music to a medley of irritating pop instrumentals that has been present now for at least a dozen years. I'd guess that by now this tired musical repellent has started to have the same effect that the original music had. When I die, the people at my funeral will be required to listen to forty five minutes of this loop.
Here's a free idea for all of you arrogant power-deranged companies: I've seen this on TV streaming services where they'll let you choose which of two dumb commercials you'd rather sit through, as if that would make any difference in annoyance level. See, with hold music, it maybe WOULD make a difference. We have the technology......all you'd have to do is build a link into your IVR system to different playlists your callers could choose, and by the time the representative, or associate, or mentor, or fucking "genius" picks up your call, you won't be so exasperated. Choose from jazz, classic rock, acoustic singer-songwriters, classical, pop country ....you get the picture, but you'll never do it because fuck these old people who want to talk to a real person.
Just a cranky old guy complaining about shit, right? Just hang up! Just learn how to use your smart phone, Luddite!
Well, just a little righteous indignation. We're all entitled to it once in a while. It's when it turns into a political ideology that it causes problems. Like these Christo-fascist motherfuckers who think they're patriots standing up for their country when they're really just racists and religious whack jobs. The so-called "Anti-Woke". The kind of people who will say things like," We just think the country is going in the wrong direction and we should go back to the way things were, say like before the 1960's. We were a Christian nation then."
I mentioned earlier the hospital in Florida. I flew down to DeSantis Land to see her in that hospital, and in visiting finally got the full story of an incident that happened to her in that pre-60's Christian nation. In 1944 when she was four years old she was involved in a bizarre highway accident. In those days cars did not have much in the way of safety features. This was before seat belts, air bags, crash-resistant frames, any of that. Some cars had what were called "suicide doors", which I assume didn't lock, which, if unlatched while the car was moving, would catch the air current and fly open because they opened out toward the back of the car. This is exactly what happened to my mother on a highway in Massachusetts. She flew right out the back door onto the road. A good samaritan who miraculously did not run her over stopped to help my grandmother and her sister attend to my mom, he gave them directions to the nearest hospital, and they took her to the emergency room. The admitting nurse asked "Is she Catholic?" She was not. "Well I'm sorry, this is a Catholic hospital and I can't admit her if she's not Catholic." she said. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the major denominations of the Christian faith, in case you didn't know. It doesn't sound very Christian to me that they refused emergency treatment to a Baptist. The sisters of mercy had none for a Protestant child with a broken arm and road pizza on her forehead! They had to leave then to get her to Mass General, a secular hospital apparently more Christian than the Catholics. So, that's my opinion of your mythic pre-60's Christian nation.
You have reached the United States of America. Your call is important to us, so please choose from the following menu. For stopping the Deep State, press 1. For Reporting "woke" behavior, press 2. For reinstating a woman's right to choose, press 3. For stopping creeping authoritarian theocratic fascism, press 4. For all other questions or to speak to a representative, press 5. Please hold.............................
