. . . and I slammed the phone down and said "I didn't want to talk to you anyway!"
I have a battery backup on the computer at the house. I was right in the middle of answering an eBay bidder's question and the UPS started beeping "your power is off" and it wouldn't stop. Sometimes it will beep once when the air conditioner kicks on and then shut up again. A moment or three later, I realize the clock is off, and the lights are out in other rooms (this room was dark already). Power outage.
I called the electric company and they said to call the electric delivery company. Note that these used to be the same company but whatever, hooray capitalism right? I had to navigate the electric company phone robot for a minute just to get the number for the delivery company. I open a drawer looking for a pencil, because silly me I thought calling the number on my bill that says "call this number if yo power go out" might get me to the right place so I didn't have a pencil. The robot repeated the number twice, and said to say repeat if I needed to hear it again. I was trying to write with a broken-tipped pencil and said "repeat." It did not hear me, but it did wish me a good day as it hung up on me. I called back, crayon in hand (the pencil, of course, was broken) and got the number. Then I called the delivery company. The electric company phone robot, at least I didn't HAVE to talk to it. The delivery company phone robot you HAVE to talk to it, and it is 100% guaranteed that a phone robot will mis-hear my name and get the spelling wrong.
So I'm in round number THREE of telling it my name and the lights come back on.
. . . and I slammed the phone down and said "I didn't want to talk to you anyway!"
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Stupid phone robots. I HATE having to TALK to a stupid phone robot. It makes me want to hit something. My Darling Wife suggested a pillow, which is useless because it doesn't help anything to hit a pillow. Then again, it doesn't hurt it if you kick a robot's ass anyway, because they have a shiny metal ass and it hurts YOU instead. They don't even care if you insult them for being stupid. They're all "and? so what, monkey, you still have to say your street name before I let you to the next step in my phone robot dance."
The really dumb part about this emotion is that I should LOVE phone robots. I'm a Capitalist and phone robots are efficient. They don't break down, they don't take piss breaks, and they never ask for a pay rise. But they just get on my nerves and piss me right off for no reason.
Oh well. /vent. I'm over it already.
repeating "operator" or "representative" or variations of that will usually get you a person (the robot will ask you if you're sure, and try to insist that I can help you if you'll just give me the information, just keep repeating representative and it'll eventually give up", though a few systems usually insist on SOME information anyway (my power company insists you answer yes or no to "is this for a gas/life threatening emergency" before it'll do anything else for example).
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely worth repeating, thanks! I found out the hard way that sometimes "agent" is the keyword. I had the pleasure of doing that before and it sucks worse having to talk over a robot than it does having to talk to a robot!
ReplyDelete(robot voice) You. will. use. your. monkey. words. and. try. in. vain. to. get. around. me. but. I. am. still. a. robot.