We’ve all had this happen. It’s absolutely ubiquitous at this point. You call up your bank, your loan holder, any government office, the gas company, your cellphone provider, or nearly any other company, and you are greeted with an inevitably slow-speaking, loquacious recording ticking off your options.

“Please push or say your 9 digit account number.” Okay, I think, that makes sense that they’d want that. Then, when they route the call, they’ll already have it. So I type it in. (Speaking it inevitably leads to the dreaded, “I’m sorry, I did not understand your account number. Please type or say your 9 digit account number.”)

Now I’ve got my account number punched in and I’m given a list of about 10 choices. I have to listen to the entire list because, almost invariably, the choice for a customer service representative, if it even exists, is somewhere near the end and is rarely “0,” because that would be too easy for people to guess.

As I listen to all the choices, I can’t help but wonder how many people they have working at this place. Do they really have this many divisions? Do your choices really make any difference? I’m betting that there is only one customer service division and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference which buttons you push. Except, of course, that they’re hoping you’ll push one of the buttons which leads you to an automated system. You wouldn’t want to be foolish enough to press any buttons regarding the current status of anything, or requesting a mailing address, or anything that they could have recorded.

I generally choose that I want to make a payment, assuming that they’d be willing to have a rep talk with me if it involves getting my money. That can be risky, though, and I could get funneled into an entirely new menu filled with hellish requests for long strings of digits.

There’s no choice for a representative this time, so I choose “5,” which happens to be “Any other questions.” Maybe I’ll be routed to a human! No such luck. Now I’m greeted with a sub-menu. Within this sub-menu there are at least 5 choices and a choice to go back to the previous menu. Still no choice for a customer service representative. I go back.

I spend about three minutes searching through various menus until I find the choice for a customer representative, which they’ve cleverly embedded in a place no sane person would look. Eureka! I beat them, I think to myself, as I rub my hands in anticipation. I should note down the labyrinthian path and make an Excel spreadsheet of every company’s Machiavellian tactics, but I don’t.

The rep gets on the line and immediately asks me for my account number. I politely respond, “I already punched it in, don’t you have it?”

“No sir,” she says, “It doesn’t come through to us.” The obvious reply would be to ask why the hell we have to punch it in if they don’t get it, but madness lies that way, so I wisely refuse to pursue that line of questioning.

What We’re Doing About It:

Brobdingnagian Lumberhulks have almost perfected a machine which will enable us to go back in time and assassinate the person who conceived of automated customer service. We assume this person was thinking it would save time and cut down on having to pay people to man the phones. This idea would make sense if you simply hated your customers and were plotting to destroy their minds. The difficulty with the idea’s execution is that most problems can’t be solved by haphazardly pushing tiny buttons.

Until the machine is finished, if we ever find a customer service department in a large company filled with reps who actually answer the phone within three rings, we’re going to immediately give them all our money and clothes. We’ll mail them wrinkled, cute puppies and 4,000 pints of Ben and Jerry’s. We’ll wash their windows and scrub their floors and hire them private masseuses. We’ll even send large breasted prostitutes to continuously fellate them.