Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for September 01, 2020

At least he has a chance to get to a real person even if that person is in India. lots of places don’t even give you THAT chance

shorter than usual.

Time is relative, especially on hold.

And we’ve chosen some especially bad elevator music for you.

This is a reflection of how long you will sit on the tarmac. If Hold Time on the phone for other places is a mere 20 to 30 minutes… your time in a cramped plane going nowhere… will be forever!

We have three calls ahead of yours…..

That long, they may ask for your number if a call-back is possible. But the spam blocking system Nomorobo™ would probably delete it.

If you think this is bad. Try imagining this back in the days of Pay-Telephones. Just how many quarters do you need to feed the phone? While at the same time people are lining up, (and displaying frustration with you), and the line is getting longer while you are on hold.

Birds need to fly on airplanes?

“There are fifty-two calls ahead of you. . .you have an approximate wait time of 20 minutes. . .we are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. . .you can visit our website. . .you may leave your name and number and you will be called back in the order your call was received. . .”

Sounds about like every call service I’ve phoned in the last ten years ! ! ! !

Just sold a house and three of the four utilities made me call to cancel. Rather than elevator music, 20 minutes of “all the things you can do with your app or on the website” EXCEPT the one thing I was trying to do!

Well at least you didn’t have to suffer through the, “We are trying to insure the safety of our employees. Due to the Corona Virus, wait times…”

at least it’s not the suicide prevention line

and we’re placing you in the express wait line

My local internet service went out temporarily about two weeks ago, so I called the provider to report the outage. I waded through the “automated” selection process for the nature of my call. I didn’t mind the wait for a live technician (about 20 minutes), but it was a little frustrating to keep hearing while on “Please hold, your call is very important to us” that I could hang up and report it to their web-site. . .

My record hold time was 2 hours for a social security representative. When I finally got a person on the line, she said I was approved and asked if I wanted to get back payments from when I was first eligible. I said yes. Turned out I got several thousand dollars more. Didn’t know sitting and holding a phone could be so lucrative.

Hello, Southwest?

Your call is important to us. Please wait on the line after your call for a short survey about your experience.

Really, how long do you think it will be before these service representatives start expecting monetary tips for their help when you call?

The tip amount will influence hold time.

Incontinence hotline. Can you hold?

But the flight he’s booking is only an hour.

Ugh.

At least the wait time was honest – usually it is WAY off…

You’d think birds would understand an airline’s delay.

Are you sure you weren’t calling Comcast Tech Support?

The phone voice was using geologic time references.

I like the ones that say, “Press 3, if you wish me to guess your wait.”