the durty version

In this day and age we have all come across devices which were intended to replace a humans job, and increase a company’s bottom line. What these devices have done is added frustration to people’s lives, limited our ability to multi-task, and have possibly increased the rate of suicide and homicide.

How many times have you used the statement, “If this shit transfers me to the wrong department again, I am going to kill someone”? The Auto-Attendant is my nemesis. Do you know how my blood boils when I hear one? It makes me have hot flashes, and I often contemplate throwing acid in someone’s face. I miss those day’s when we could have just pressed ZERO and got an operator who knew your questions, and would transfer you to the correct department. Nowadays, we have to listen to a whole list of menu commands and chose the one which best fits your question. The worst is when you press the wrong button, and have to go back to stage one. Below I created a list of annoyances that make me want to pull out the shotty and just make matter hit the pavement.

• The Auto-Attendant Nuances

1. Auto-Attendants that do not have a back button
2. One that make you listen to the whole list of commands before you can punch in your entry
   1. Time Warner Cable’s is the worst. Especially if they have a service outage. You have to listen to all that shit before you can go forward
3. One’s that change so frequently, you have to listen to the entire message before you can move forward, because all of your frequently used keys have changed.
4. One that uses a speech recognition technology
   1. Bank of America has the worst. Try calling while on lunch walking down the street. You can’t it hears traffic noise as you speaking. You cannot turn it off.
   2. Verizon has one too. It’s not good if you have an accent, speak slowly, or have food in your mouth.
5. One that does not have your option available
6. One that tells you that ZERO is an invalid command
7. One that does not allow you to get to an operator at all
   1. Central Hudson. Have you ever tried to call them? I literally went through their entire menu system trying to get a live voice
8. One that is broken. You call, it just hangs up.
9. One that only after being on hold for what seems like an eternity, disconnects
10. One with shitty hold music
11. One with an alert that is broadcast across the music or silent hold every few seconds
12. One that does not have a consistent volume across all of the transfers (high music, low music, barely audible commands…)

As stated above. Auto-Attendants are absolutely horrible. We want humans back. I am sure they have attributed to people going berserk and killing someone, smashing their phones, going to the company breaking glass, and all sorts of outlandish things. It also decreases your productivity. It is much easier to pay attention to a person while talking to rather than listen to a list of commands and think about one that fits your request. It’s almost as if a telephone call to a big company requires 100% of your attention for the entire duration of the call.

I would bet my bottom dollar the only person interested in Auto-Attendants, on the listening end, is the person who invented it. He/she is so paid, I am sure they go around just patiently listening to each person’s implementation, saying, “Gosh. I’m good”. I’d like to tell them to go Fuck themselves and east ground rusty nail, sand, and shards of glass.