Wired News offers, at least indirectly, a new strategy for dealing with voicemail hell: As soon as the system takes your call, scream a hysterical string of profanities into the phone as loud as you can.
February 10, 2004
Bill Barol
I'm a freelance writer in Santa Monica, Ca. But what I really want to do is not get paid for blogging.
I had discovered that recently, though I wasn't quite sure how it worked. I thought maybe it recognised the word "operator" in "JUST CONNECT ME TO A ***ING OPERATOR NOW YOU ****".
I think I have particular trouble with the lines that try to recognise what I am saying though, because I'm a Brit but now live in America, and those things simply don't work for me. It's hard enough getting a human being to put tomatoes in my sandwich, let alone getting a machine to recognise my name or a number....
Posted by: eldan | February 10, 2004 at 03:03 PM
Great. The calm patient folks get to wait on hold until they degenerate into jerks while the natural born a-holes go to the front of the line and the customer service reps never get to speak to a sane person again. Yippeeeeee!!!!! I love progress.
Posted by: Leslie Cohen | February 11, 2004 at 09:00 AM
I don't look at it that way. I actually think (not to come over all serious all of a sudden) that there's something empowering about being able to screech angrily at a machine and actually have it respond. I'd hope the screecher would then have the humanity to be nice to the human who gets the call, recognizing that it's not the human's fault they were stuck on hold, but maybe that's blue-sky optimism. and you know me, leslie -- I'm a glass is half-full kinda guy! I believe in changing "don't know" to "do, yes"! I believe it's nice to be funny, but it's even funnier to be nice! have a super day!
Posted by: Bill | February 11, 2004 at 10:00 AM
Next time you get a call from one of the automated systems that has voice recognition technology -- when it asks you for your first answer, say "Take Me To Your Leader" very clearly. Most systems will either transfer you to a live manager, or hang up on you.
Posted by: Pauly D | February 11, 2004 at 10:14 AM
that is so freakin' cool.
Posted by: Bill | February 11, 2004 at 10:50 AM
this particular screecher didn't have any trouble being nice to the human being when I got through to one, but it's really not a job I envy. I'm sure they take all manner of abuse for things completely out of their control....
Posted by: eldan | February 11, 2004 at 10:41 PM