Please stay on the line. Or don’t stay on the line. We don’t care. If we cared about your call, we’d answer it. Which, to be honest, isn’t going to happen.
We’re going to make you hold. And while you hold, we’re going to subject you to some awful music. For a very long time. If that doesn’t drive you away, maybe we’ll let finally you talk to somebody.
They will be friendly and cheerful but completely unable to help you.
Because YOUR CALL IS NOT VERY IMPORTANT TO US.
We don’t care about your call, or about the problem you are seeking to resolve, or about you. We care deeply about the lovely green stuff in your wallet. But that’s as far as our caring goes.
PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.
When we say that, we’re lying!
We really want you to hang up and go away. Answering the phone, even with an automatic system like this, costs money. We’d much rather you log onto our website, so we can fire the few remaining phone-answering employees we actually have left on the payroll.
YOUR CALL WILL BE ANSWERED BY THE NEXT AVAILABLE OPERATOR.
That’s a laugh. Because it implies that there are sufficient operators — somewhere — standing by waiting to take your call.
In your dreams, pal.
Once upon a time, there were.
Back in the Golden Age of Customer Service, in the halcyon days of the rotary phone, we had a huge team of well-informed, motivated people who promptly took calls and actually cared about helping you.
We fired them all and replaced them with five dudes in Bangalore.
They are eager to speak with you. Alas, they will barely be able to understand you, let alone understand your problem. Helping you solve that problem is, of course, totally out of the question, so PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.
How many hours will you spend in Customer Service Limbo listening to crap music and our lying insistence that we care and our relentless plugging of our website before you hang up? Or hang yourself?
We don’t know. And we don’t care.
So go ahead —
PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE.
Dear Obnoxious Customer Service Dept. of Even More Obnoxious Monster Company:
Press 1 if you understand English.
Press 2 if you understand Italian, because I can curse you in that language, too.
Press 3 to hear my really long advertisement of my new book, after which someone might speak to you … or not.
Press 4 if you have the nerve to speak to me. I advise you to have a lawyer and a therapist present.
HA!
“… and a representative will be right with you.”
Empuyer Numero huit si vous parles Francaise.
Press One if you speak English.
…
Press xyer fervd Kerfisian. (Okay, I made that one up.)
My dear Roz, you can call me anytime you like. I mean…
Rosalind, you have evoked fury and hilarity in a few hundred words — starting with your perfect headline. “Your column is important to us,” because we’ve all lived it.
Roz (I use your “given” name in keeping with the current, let’s-be-friends vogue) you laid it down on the hardwood. And left it there to flip, flop and die. While I stayed on your line, still hoping for Hal C. Yon to ask howhe could help me because of the pleasure you engendered by recounting moments of pain.
Gary you can call me Roz any time. THANKS for the comment.
They are Evil Incarnate. Being on hold forever is the seventh rung of hell. Or how about those people who are SO polite and profuse with apologies but will not apply any common sense to an obvious problem? This is the customer slogan these days: We don’t care. We don’t have to.
Too true, alas.