If you need something else, press 0

[ashling]

If you need more time, press 8

[LiberalEsto]

1. To repeat this menu, press #

To contact the Mother Ship press &%&

[Gorp]

2. To sit on hold listening to really bad music cut in and out, press 5

To talk to an actual human, hang up and go pound your head on a concrete floor.

[TrogL]

3. My office phone is bizarre.

My desk is so full of monitors and crap the only place for the phone is someplace really awkward. I can't see to dial so I have to key from memory. I grew up on 10-digit calculators so I've got that in my memory and the phone is upside down (what idiot made that decision?) so I often key wrong numbers.

You have to log in, your password changes about once a week and they won't let you repeat for a year. There's a 2-digit key sequence to get to your messages, another key sequence to hear each message, then a choice of two two-digit key sequences to either forward or delete. Think this through. There's only two choices, but the key sequence is two digits.

What's up with all the button pushing? Do they want me to get carpel tunnel?

[lunatica]

4. To improve your day hang up

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. Some companies have gone in the opposite direction

I have Time Warner for my Internet and I've tried calling them (such as for a request I wanted to make about a year ago for a longer connecting cable). If you Google Time Warner and the name of your city, a local phone number appears with your area code. However, that local phone number is not not connected to any store but is automatically routed to a national answering desk. After an exhausting gauntlet of "are you a brown-eyed Caucasian male between the ages of 60 and 65 and part your hair on the left, please answer yes or no" I got a real person and their national phone number told me they don't give out local phone numbers so that you have to go to the local Time Warner store if you want to find out what cable sizes they have or for anything else regarding their service. I went to the local store and really angered the lone person there when I told him I noticed the telephone sitting on his counter which meant he had a telephone and a number and why I had to get into my car and burn gas for 20 minutes just to ask him about cable sizes. He said the phone was not for customers because that would mean they'd have to hire people to answer questions from the public. When I asked how his company could take my money every month but refuse to give me a phone number his eloquent response was "tough shit".