The ABIB

The ABIB

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Please Listen Carefully As Our Menu Options Have Recently Changed

Liar, liar pants on fire!  How many times have you heard that insipid recorded directive?  Conservatively I've heard it about a billion times.  OK, slight hyperbole; conservatively, about 900 million times.  Regardless of how many times I've heard it (seriously, at least 50 million times) it's always a baldfaced LIE!  Because you know what?  The fucking menu options NEVER change...ever.  I've been calling service provider numbers for years, YEARS people, and every time I have to wait through that fucking command, telling me that their menu of options, so dynamically changeable, has in fact, recently changed and well, hell, you wouldn't want to assume that customer service is option 7, as it has been for eternity, and push it before hearing all the other six fucking options and end up in , godforbid, Billing.  So here you go, listening to the droning, recorded voice slowly step through all the fucking options, beginning with what language you want to be served this pointless drudgery in, saving, OF COURSE, Customer Service as the last option.

So you wait, and listen and frankly, I, being The ABIB, boil because well, that flat, metallic voice  has not changed her tune in minimum, MINIMUM, five years.  Don't know about you but I've tried to scream through the wait:

To receive this message in English, press 1
Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.
For Billing, press 2
To hear the last five charges on your account, press 3
ME: CUSTOMER SERVICE!!
For technical assistance, press 4
ME, pressing frantically, 77777777777
For account balance information, press 5
For claims, press 6
ME: CUSTOMER SERVICE!!
For customer service, say or press 7
SEVEN YOU FUCKING BITCH!!

I don't know which is worse, the aggregious waste of my time, since I knew way back at selecting English, that I wanted option 7, that I've ALWAYS wanted option 7, and that I've been SELECTING option 7 every time I have called in for the last FIVE FUCKING YEARS.  So, yeah, the recorded slow talking annoyance is wasting my time in a big way.  But maybe I'm equally pissed off at the whole "recorded disembodied voice telling me what to do" agita. Because, really, this robotic presence is, for the time that I'm stuck on this call, contolling my life.  She's the keeper of the end game, she's got the goods waiting for me at option 7, and still I have to listen through all six previous options because, well, that's the way she wants it.  I think that, as we approach The Singularity, this is one among many ways that our future robotic overlords are paving the way for our emerging status as patient supplicants, doing as we're told, waiting for the sake of waiting, even though our human brains KNOW that the goods await behind option 7, we wait because we have to in order to learn our new status.  Yeah, that's it!  They're slowly cowing us into submission with the forced passivity of waiting until we're told to press the button.  Come to think of it, maybe the insipid lie of a warning that HOLD UP MOTHERFUCKER: THIS MENU HAS CHANGED, when it really hasn't, is just their way of turning the screws a little more.  Yeah, THEY know that WE know that the fucking menu hasn't changed since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.  Anyway, it's their game, people, because when you need option 7, there ain't nothing to do but wait.  The question is: what will it mean when the menu options DO actually change? Mindfuck.  Skynet: I'm onto you.