Sax Maniac's Journal: Thank you for your call, your call is important to us!

Thank you for your patience. A representative will be there momentarily. Due to unusually high call volume, hold times may be longer than usually. Please continue to hold for the next available representative.

I have to rant about this, because some idiot programs these and sets them up. And, they seem designed to be as annoying as possible.

Many years ago, when all this started going down the tubes, I would simply press 0 as soon as I heard a computer babble. Then it became Thank you for0!... Welcome to0!... Please listen to our men0!... For English, pr0!... You have reach0!... Please wai0! silence (or muzak), finally.

The lack of a new prompt meant you're getting somewhere.

Then, that stopped working. So I purchased a speakerphone so I could get on with my life and do something while waiting hours on hold. But it seems like they are actively thwarting this!

In the good old days, you'd get some muzak, and could hear something cool like "We're Not Gonna Take It" rendered by a string orchestra. Not that the muzak was good, but because it was far less annoying.

There are two reasons why.

First, and foremost, the voices make it much harder to put this stupid phone call in the background, and let me try do something useful with the hour of time I'm going waste. If it was just a constant stream of muzak, you could mentally tune it out. One a real live human picked up, your brain would automatically pick out the pattern change.

Now, with the false platitudes, you actually have to listen to the content of the voices to determine whether it's live or not. It's no longer sufficient to pattern-match music vs. voice; no, now the task is a much more difficult recorded voice vs. human voice.

Second reason is I don't like being lied to. Everything said is total bullshit. If my call was really important to you, I wouldn't be on hold. If you really were experiencing unusually high call volume, then it wouldn't be like this every single time I call. The word momentarily does not mean "in thirty minutes".

It's not enough to lie to me once, no, you have to repeat the lie over and over. What purpose does this serve? I suppose somewhere, someone who's never been on hold before, thinks it calms me down. Or that by repeating it enough, I'll eventually think it's true. Or by repeating it enough, they will think it's true.

This is not the effect it has on me.

Instead, each repeated lie is a like nail being driven into my skull at unpredictable intervals. BANG. bang.... BANG! bangBANG!

Sometimes you get a panoply of voices. One is not enough: the bland no-accent all-purpose white guy voice actor; the overly-happy sounding lady with just a little too much of your third-grade teacher in her voice actor; the relucant receptionist with the thick New England accent and gruff smoke-cracked voice.

It's oh-so-entertaining when they get into a grudge match and start cutting each other off, like Boston drivers too impatient to wait their turn to make a left across traffic. Or, even better, when the voices start overlapping each other, like uninsured Boston drivers when presented a traffic circle.

Get rid of the voices, already!

Finally, please use more than a 30-second loop of music. The only thing worse than being on hold for an hour, is being on hold subject to thirty seconds of the same Kenny G sax lick repeated over and over. I don't like Kenny G, but even if I did, I wouldn't like that much of it. Would it be too much to ask for the entire song before looping? Maybe the entire CD?