Posts Tagged ‘Phone’

This is what I look like after being on hold for 58 minutes waiting to talk to a guy in Sri Lanka about my BBQ warranty.

It’s time we had a talk. I want you to know I appreciate <insert product or service here>, but that I will never memorize my 12-digit account number. Additionally, I don’t know my password, which has been changed three times in the last year and contains a Capital letter, a Number and a Diacritical mark of some kind so that it looks more like a swear word than a password. Finally I never need to listen closely to your automated phone tree just because “some of our options may have changed.” I never had the original options memorized to begin with and I never will.

Please help me simplify my life by just looking up my name and authenticating me by verifying the answers to my security questions. The answers usually being: “6 months” and “grave robbing.”

And the questions being: How much jail time have you served? and What is your favorite hobby? (Which incidentally is the same reason I did jail time).

If you would do that for me <insert name of corporation here> I would get back the 2 months of my life I’ve spent trying to tell you it really is me.

Now, before you go, if you’d like to take a survey expressing your level of satisfaction with this letter, press 1 for yes. If you don’t press 1 for yes expect another 8 minutes added to your hold time – just sayin’.

Thank You for Listening,

Your Loyal Consumer David Hasenpfeffer

Why Mr. Hardiman. Please get a clue. Don’t you know who this is?

As an inveterate New York Times crossword puzzle solver, I’d hit a dead end with 28 Across. 8 letters starting with d and ending in s. The clue read “Certain numbers.” Hmmm, I pondered; unable to shrink “denominators” or stretch “digits” into 8 letters. Having spent an embarrassingly long time ruminating over it and having exhausted every internet crossword site, I decided to call the New York Times Crossword Clue 976 number where I’d get the answer to my clue and the closure I so dearly sought. At $2 per minute though, I’d need to be quick about it or I’d rack up certain enormous numbers. Evidently in my haste to expedite matters, I misdialed (mis-poked really) and unknowingly called a phone sex number. I should’ve known something was amiss when the lady on the other end said, “Listen honey, do you know who you dialed? You haven’t got a clue do you?”

“No. I do have a clue,” I protested. “I do have a clue and it’s 28 across…8 letters…certain numbers. Any ideas?” 

“We get this a lot of this sweetie. You misdialed,” she instructed me. “This is 976-KISS, not 976-CLUE. You need to dial certain numbers to speak to the proper party.” I quickly hung up.

Yikes! I’d accidentally called a phone sex operator and it was now part of my permanent record. I was unclean. I wondered if I wouldn’t be allowed within 100 yards of Taylor Swift or locked out of the Disney Channel. But as the experience settled in and my curious mind began to consider this industry as an economic entity, I did some research and began an examination of this unique service from a labor management point of view. What I discovered was worth reading all the way to the end. Especially if you want to know the answer to the crossword puzzle clue.  I did not realize the industry was on the cusp of unionizing. You can learn a lot from doing crossword puzzles. Here’s my report:   Read the rest of this entry »