I recently spent some time in voice jail trying to get a hold of a customer service representative. What a fun and joyful way to waste an hour in the morning. Man, I loves me some voice jail.
For peeling paint, press 1. If the cup you rattle the bars with lost its handle, press 2. If you’re experiencing enough mental anguish to get an entry in the Journal of American Psychology, press the pound button really, really hard.
I can’t emphasize to you how much I really fucking hate this era of no human operators. I’m stuck in the antiquated mindset that sincerely believes issues can be resolved that much easier if you could just talk to another human being. Unfortunately, I live in the era of pressing fifty buttons and attempting to get a non-living entity to literally understand my vocal responses. I have no patience for pressing 27 buttons just to end up being forwarded to an operator anyway, and I have recently resorted to screaming operator from the minute the robobitch operator picks up the line.
No, you goddamn stupid machine, I said I needed a balance as of last night, NOT a blazing transvestite. Fuck.
Now, it’s been said that Americans are becoming ruder, less patient and completely unruly in their everyday lives. I understand. Almost nothing gets me as wound up as fighting to navigate voice jail. I can’t stand those fucking “describe your problem briefly” bullshit exercises in which the machine doesn’t understand a word you say and then takes 12 minutes to forward you to an operator anyway. Just put me on with the fucking operator in the first place. Don’t make me say something 6,513 times only to keep saying in that artificially cheery and grating tone, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your response. Let’s try this again.” Of course you didn’t understand; you’re not even fucking real. My kingdom for the bad old days when you could just go to the operator in the first place.
That’s a klassic. Now, if you don’t remember that routine, it’s past your bedtime. Go to bed. Don’t tell your parents you read this blog either, you’re going to be in trouble. But seriously, there are only so many phrases a machine can respond to, and it can’t recognize every single language or English in every single accent on earth. This is a fact. I have a few friends from Great Britain that have no luck whatsoever getting any machine from the U.S. to understand a word they say. Apparently answering machines only speak Midwestern and Trailer Park. That high-brow upper crust thing just doesn’t register.
Now, on the note of Americans being rude. Well, yes we are. We really wouldn’t be if you customer service people didn’t force us into it. In the past few months I’ve had CS reps from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh that couldn’t understand a word that I said, Americans who honestly can’t seem to answer a question no matter how mundane, a jackass that simply read the company’s website to me and more than a dozen CS reps from around the world that really couldn’t give a shit, even if it did mean I’d get the hell off their lines. Look, I hate you as much as you hate me, and if I could get the answer off the damn website, do you really think I’d bother to call you? Look, I understand that CS rep is one of the shittiest jobs in the world that doesn’t actually involve handling night soil.
This is the typical developing nation call center. Note the old-fashioned amber colored monitors.
Yeah, it has to suck talking to cranky bitches all day. Unfortunately that’s your fucking job, and it’s not our fault that you get to enjoy all the hostility of somebody who just had to scream “OPERATOR!” non-stop for the past 10 minutes for the whopping salary of $1.25 per day. Maybe you could encourage your employer to get rid of that whole voice jail thing.
Does this look familiar? It should, that was me earlier this week. All I wanted was one simple question answered, and they forced me to take the hard option.
Now, in your defense, we Americans could be a little less stupid. I know what it’s like dealing with stupid, high-maintenance bitches all day and it sucks. I know that to you, the typical person calling customer service looks a smidge like this:
I know you think that all Americans are like these folks:
Well, we’re not. Don’t act like we’re all here to lord some sort of false sense of superiority over you. Yes, there are plenty of chuckleheads out there, but most of us are just nice people pushed to the edge by shitty technology forcing us to scream at the phone. We’ll try to do better, I promise. Maybe we can start by taking Fox News off the air or something.
In the mean time, let me tip off some of you English speakers living in America on how to navigate long hold times and bullshit vocal response programs. The next time you get the robobitch, you may hear something similar to this: “Para español, marque el numero ocho.” (Fill in the number of your choice.) Press that number. Not only does this usually result in you being forwarded to an actual human being, I guarantee this human being will speak English. No shit. I can speak a little Spanish, but I’ve never had a problem talking to one of these reps. So far they can’t find a computer or a person in India that can navigate Spanish as well as real people. It’s just an added bonus that these people can also speak English. You know what that means…
