All of our members are busy at the moment. Estimated time to first witty reply is currently three hours twenty seven minutes. while your waiting could I interest you in some of our other products?
Listen, sister, when you’ve spent 30 minutes on hold listening to the Muzak versions of “9 to 5”, “Friends in Low Places”, and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, THEN we’ll talk.
Well, look at it this way: you can walk away from the phone and go do something else while still being able to hear if the hold music is still playing. It might actually be sort of pleasant from a distance.
I achieved a personal goal the other day, whereby I sang hold music to a telemarketer (whose office had a system which rings you up, starts off with an automated message and then - yes - puts you on hold). I got right through the first bit of Clair de Lune, complete with interruptions of, “your call is important to us. You are <twelfth> in the queue,” before he hung up.
Our company employs the non-descript-waterfall-crystal-gazer-music while waiting for a conference call to start. It’s the same six bars of music forEVAH until the host joins the call. If they’re late, you WILL go insane.
Hold music generally sucks, but once in a long while they play something passable. What I can’t stand is when the “your call is important to us” message finishes, the same stupid song STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING. When the little voice message comes every 15 seconds, this is a real problem.
I hate when they stop the music to let you know that your call is important and you get that little feeling of joy that your time in the holding cell is over but no, sadly it is not. That rising joy is crushed by the automated voice that lets you know that you are still on hold. Which is good, because the ***hold * ** music was kind of “iffy” with me.
Most hold music sucks, but sometimes the companies I deal with have really awesome hold music, and it pains me when they cut into the “your call is important to us” every ten seconds, so my rocking out to Talking Heads or whatever becomes stuttered.
What was that commercial where somebody was stranded on a deserted road and was calling for help, and when the operator came on, they asked to be put back on hold because the music was awesome?
My ex was on hold for a really long time once, and the hold music was Stevie Wonder. He called me into his office and we sang and danced. When the callee answered, he asked him to put us back on hold until the song was done!
Even great music can turn into grating crap when it’s used as hold music. I once called a software company (I can’t remember what the software was. I think it was called Stupid Shit That You Will Hate And It Will Break Your Computer, Too, Sucker v1.0.) and I had to hold for a tech. For something like two hours. The hold music was Mozart’s Symphonia Concertante, which I once liked. But I would here the first two minutes of it, then it would be interrupted by the “Please continue to hold” thing, then it would start from the beginning again. And again. And again. For two. Fucking. Hours.
The worst is when they have a local radio station as their hold music, and the station isn’t tuned juuuust quite right, so there’s a little static in there.
My husband’s employer does this, and I’ve told him several times that someone needs to tune in the radio station a little better.
With all the rants here, I feel compelled to give at least one rave. Back in the mid-90s, at least, Microsoft had a live DJ spinning records (CDs?) for the hold music. When I did tech support, I got quite a few compliments about it. The DJ was good and the music was good.
You try listening to Beethoven’s 5th over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
I worked for a tech startup (started by an ex Microsoftie, tdn) and our hold music was just a discman in the server room set to full-disk repeat. It was something of a battle between the engineers (who wanted good, interesting music) and the management (who wanted something safe and generic). Anybody who knew the combination to open the server room door could put on whatever disk they wanted. I had The Carl Stalling Project on there for a while, and I know we had They Might Be Giants (Flood, I think), Paul Simon’s Graceland and some Harry Belafonte on at one time or another.
I once called my brother at work. They answered pretty quick and put me on hold while they located him.
“Hey Big Sis!”
“Hey you! I’m surprised, you guys actually have some nice music.”
“Eeeh, glad you like it, the CD is yours!”
“Well, gee, isn’t it GRAND of you to let me know when you borrow my stuff? I’d been looking for it everywhere for, what, over a month? Duuuuude, ain’t got a problem with lending you my records, but I want those here This Afternoon or I’m coming to your house for them. At 3 a.m., got that?”
Last time I got put on hold, there was no music. Just the nice lady saying “your call is important to us. All our agents are busy at the time. Please continue holding, we apologize for the wait.” Half an hour of that… yaaaaawn… I was surprised I still remembered what had I called about, when I finally got a non-recorded nice guy.