Automated Phone Answering Systems-I Hate Them!

I know this is going to come as a shock to some, but I'm going to go out on a ledge and divulge it anyway. I'm opinionated. Yep. It's true. I know. Usually I'm like a shrinking violet always keeping my thoughts to myself, right? Not this time. Nope! I have a strong opinion and I fully intend to share it.

I know what you're thinking right now. What could possibly be so bad that it inspires an opinion in Aimee that is at all worth sharing? Well, I'm going to share it. Hold on to your hats. I'm sure I'm very much in the minority on this one. The topic: Automated phone answering machines. I. CAN'T. STAND. THEM!!!

If I have to take the time to look up a company's number, make sure I have all of my account information ready, and speak politely, I should at least be given the courtesy of having a human answer the phone. Instead, I'm greeted with a list of about seven thousand, four hundred, sixty-five choices of which button to push (half of which aren't even in English!!) Once I finally choose the one that almost meets my needs, I start to get my hopes up that I'm about to talk to a real living human being. I start thinking for a few brief moments that someone with a pulse and blood running through their veins is going to grace me with a moment of their attention.

Of course my hopes and dreams of speaking to another person of the human race are quickly dashed when I realize that I now have some voice activated computer to tell my woes to. Really? Really!?!? REALLY!?!?!?!?! Without fail, one of the children in the house make some sort of background noise, which the stupid computer doesn't recognize, so it freaks out and says something like "I am sorry. I do not recognize that response. Ending call now. Bzzzzzzzzz." By this point, I'm now in the fetal position in the silence of my bathroom preparing to try to make the same stupid call for the fiftieth time. I start all over. First, I get the recording explaining "we seem to be having heavy phone traffic right now. Your expected wait time is about seven years. SEVEN YEARS!!!! I listen to the fifty billion options (half of which are still not in my language), choose my option that almost meets my needs, am rerouted to about seventy-five "customer service specialists", and finally make it back to the voice activated computer. And what happens in the silence of my bathroom where the children's voices can't possibly throw anything off? A fart. Seriously. A FART!!! And what am I bound to hear next? "I am sorry. I do not recognize that response. Ending call now. Bzzzzzzzzz."

It's not always this bad. Sometimes I only feel the urge to gouge one eye out before hanging up rather than wanting to gouge them both out and hang myself by my toenails in the closet.

Really. Automated phone answering services are enough to get war prisoners to fess up to their crimes. Forget Chinese water torture. This is so much worse.

So, there you have it. I have an opinion. And now I've shared it.