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There are so many reasons why I hate automatic answering services. Unless I am leaving a message, I don’t like hearing machinery when I’m trying to call a person. I’m not calling to check my balance, I would use a computer for that. I’m calling because I want a person. So why is it you are doing everything possible to keep me from a human interaction?
Automatic answering services are evil. Their entire goal is to lead you around in circles and pretend to not understand everything. They often ask you to “speak your responses,” which I refuse to do because I know how successful that always is. So how does this nefarious machine react? By “pretending” to hear things that it cannot understand - that’s right, it picks up the background noises and after 2 seconds says, “I’m sorry! I could not understand you! Please try again!” (Yes, there must have been a scripting error in the programming that makes every utterance an exclamation.)
Sometimes I just try cursing at the machine, barely coherent to even myself, because my own message just gets lost in the explicit relief I get from shouting and slewing profanity after profanity, using each curse word in every grammatical form I can think of. You’d think they would have programmed these machines to notice angry voices, frustration and endless profanities and just give in and connect you. But no, the machines don’t care.
The other malicious game they play with you is the dead-end game which disguises itself as an endless circle of machinery offering you services you don’t want, need, or give a flying fuck about, so you chose whatever is the closest thing and 10 options later you notice that you are actually back to the main menu, and no matter how many times you go through all of the possible menu combinations, attempting to navigate the spiderweb of options hoping that there is a mortal voice on the other end, you realize that this labyrinth is nothing but a death spiral that only leads you further into despondency.
Luckily, there is an app for that. No, not for despondency - at least, not yet - but for getting humans on the phone. Us earthlings can’t get through to the other earthlings, but we can use our machines to get through their machines and possibly get the help we need. GetHuman offers advice for dialing, and they have their own app for droids and iPhones, which commands you what to type at each prompt in order to get a human. The alternative is Talk To A Human, but it will cost you €0.91 or $1.25, and I don’t pay for apps.
