A while back, I heard the This American Life segment about this guy on the relentless search for this glorious music he heard while he was on hold. So they go on an on how great it is (There is actually a youtube link where you can listen to it for an hour.) By this time I am really curious what this wonderful music sounds like.
Once the program finally gets around to playing a sample of the music, I start laughing. Because it our companies hold music and I HATE it!
One of the reasons I hate it is because of what it does. Let me set up the scenario.
We got a new phone system a year or two ago and the hold music came with it. We periodically have meetings that we call into with many people on the line from many different organizations across the country. Also, many different people from our company participate based upon what kind of meeting it is. We usually just participate with each person in their own office so they can get things done when the meeting is not their area of interest.
A couple of times a year, someone from our company gets a call from someone else (e.g. their wife) while they are in this meeting. Since our meetings are usually boring, they take the new call. This puts the line with the big meeting on hold. So now their phone starts blaring this hold music into the meeting, and it is way louder than everyone else. We try to shout over to no avail. So we run up and down the halls (or go to floors) trying to find the person who has put us on hold and tell them to hang up. It awful.
We have complained and asked the company VP and comms person to just remove the hold music, but they refuse. They like it.
I know, not that interesting. I am not angry enough for the Pit. A true MPSIMS.
Not really related, but where else am I going to mention this? When I pay my gas bill by phone, they always have a sans vocals version of Devo’s Working In A Coal Mine playing.
I’m not sure this helps, but office phone systems usually include an option for custom hold music. In one of my offices, all I had to do was plug in a CD player and set it for repeat play. I imagine you could do the same thing with a MP3-based thumbdrive. At least the gnormous number of songs you could put in the rotation would prevent the same song from repeating very often.
LoL, shouldn’t that be for paying the Electric Company?
As for the OP
I think i would start firing the people who put the meeting on hold.
Would not take more than two firings i think to get the point driven home.
I once called an office (I no longer remember which) and the message offered the following choices: “Press one for urban, two for pop, three for country, four for classical…”
When I told my husband about it, he asked, “What do you press for blessed silence?”
As a buyer, I spend a LOT of time on the phone trying to track things down. I hate, hate, hate all hold music. I’ve listened to talk radio on hold. I’ve listened to radio stations that were not properly tuned in. I’ve listened to some creepy shit that made me look for that clown doll from poltergeist. I’ve listened to those loops with 15 seconds of music interrupted by a little commercial telling me someone would be right with me. Annyoing statement four times a minute while I’m on hold for 15 minutes? That’s waaay too much. And if you call West Marine, you’ll hear the NOAA weather report for San Diego.
Besides being annoying, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else when you’ve got the Tiajuana Brass blowing away in one ear.
I think every person who makes the decision of what music should be played on hold for their office/company should be required to stay on hold at least 20 minutes a week while random people come to ask them questions they desperately need answered.
I hate hold music with a burning passion. I don’t care if it’s my favorite song–it’s just long enough and distracting enough for me to forget my train of thought by the time an “agent” gets on the phone. If it’s really bad, I’m too distracted to remember my vital statistics on the first try (address, DOB, whatever).
If something must be played, what about a track of soothing nature sounds? I think I could deal with that.
Years and years back, the shop I worked for had a fax machine with a Kewl! Feature!.. its own hold music. It became a game to try and get customers to call on that line so we could contrive an excuse to put them on hold for a bit and then listen to the howls of agony when we picked up again.
It was a short, horrid, tinny digital version of “Greensleeves.” Gawd, I can still hear it.
Meant to say… That comes from phone audio’s limited bandwidth. Places that just jack in full range audio sound like shit. The best hold music is composed and limited to the channel range of about 50-2800 Hz. Second best is chosen not to have essential high tones and gently compressed and limited in range.
I’m just going to say that this sounds EXACTLY like something ThisAmerican Life would run. If the OP hadn’t mentioned the source specifically I could have guessed it pretty easily.
