My mother’s doctor’s office. Bad '70s folk rock. When he finally picks up the phone, rather than asking if he’s changed her prescriptions, I’m going to yell, “Jesus Kee-rist, who chooses your goddam hold music?!”
Good hold music is so rare I invariably compliment whatever operator picks up. “Great Beach Boys!” “Love the Vivaldi!”
But why, oh why, is 90% of hold music still the crap you would claw your way out of an elevator to avoid?! I mean someone has to choose it, right?
Yes, it’s either instrumental from some good tunes, so the instrumental ruins it…
or it’s really bad jazz (I don’t like jazz to start with!)…
or it’s just HORRIBLE.
That’s the sort of thing that makes me complain about the hold music. I’d rather have Muzak than the Beach Boys. 
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking…
Try calling Travelocity some time. Their hold music is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is fine, except that’s the only song, and they repeat it non-stop until someone helps you. It doesn’t help that it’s a rather repetitive tune. You begin to think they’re deliberately mocking you.
Okay, you stole that entire post directly from my brain and I want to know how. I clicked the link, already knowing what I was going to post, and there it was, under your username. Punctuation, capitalization, line breaks, and all. I want my BRAAAAAIN BACK!
My husband’s former place of work played a commercial to you while you were on hold. Same commercial. Over and over.
If I’ve been on hold for any amount of time, when he picks up the phone, I say in a hypnotized voice, “I want Pinnacle lenses. Must have Pinnacle lenses. I must ask my eye-care consultant about Pinnacle lenses today. Pinnacle lenses . . . Pinnacle lenses . . .”
How does this make any business sense at all? They’re on hold. That means they’re waiting for your sorry ass. You’re already wasting their time. A goodly portion of people on hold are probably pissed. Who on Earth said, “Hey, captive audience! We can make them listen to a commercial over and over!”
Or how about the volume discrepancies?
Aaaaand aaaaaaaaaaaaaaie-aie-aie will aaalwaaays love youuuuuuuuuuuuBREE-YAP! Your call is very important to us, please hold the line. BOO-WAP! uuuuuuuu-woo-woo…
Enough to make me leap out of my seat 'cause it scares the crap outta me and hurts my ear.
Heck my doctor’s stole his hold music from an ice cream truck.
DOO DOO dee dee Doo DOO…
I got an earfull of Dean Martin(!) today. I haven’t heard him in years and never while on hold.
I’d rather have the worst music than a recorded message. “Thank you for calling Amerisuites! Blah blah blah Prime Rewards program! Blah blah blah don’t downsize, Amerisize! Second verse, same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!”
Papa John’s is another big offender on that one.
“Your call is important to us.”
Really? Then PICK UP AND SPEAK TO ME!!!
My theory as to why the music sucks so horribly: They figure they can’t make eveyone happy, so they may as well make everyone unhappy.
Plus we’ll be overjoyed when the guy finally picks up on the other end, making us forget for a moment that he’s probably the new guy, knows nothing, and will accidentally hang up on you while trying to change your billing address in the computer.
It’s 2004 - or, it will be, for another 12 seconds. Times Square is covered with confetti , all around there are sounds of people laughing, crying, reminiscing. Many are embracing, Many more have their eyes glued to giant monitors. Even more are staring at a gigantic plastic ball, covered in white lycra, suspended above the ground on a gigantic pole.
Time passes. The suspense is unbearable. The ball is about to drop.
3, 2, 1, 0.
There’s a dreadful moment of silence. Everyone blinks, and looks up. Sure enough, the ball hasn’t dropped. It isn’t dropping.
It’s opening. One side of the sphere slowly turns to slide under the other, leaving three quarters of the sphere as a chair. In it sits… No. No. It can’t be.
But it is. Up on the monitors, in a white lycra suit, is the gigantic glowing image of Kenny G.
That’s the last thing you remember before you passed out and your head slammed into the pavement. You wake up smelling sterile hospital floors, and instinctively reach over to the side of the bed you’re lying on. You fumble to grasp an issue of the New York Times. The bile rises in your stomach as you see Kenny G’s gigantic image on the front cover, transmitted by LCD to frightened New Yorkers, huddled like scientists under a close encounter of the third kind. Your eyes flit to the caption:
“Kenny G, in a dramatic turn of events last night, announces his promotion to creative director of the Muzak Corporation, and also announces revolutionary five-way merger with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG Entertainment, EMI Group, and Warner Brother’s Music.”
Your blood runs cold, and a sort of caffeinated itching runs up and down your arm, an urge to remove yourself from this surreal nightmare.
You glance around - and under the New York Times, it appears that someone’s left a scalpel. Why did someone leave a scalpel in an unconcious patient’s room? You don’t know. You figure it’s just a bad plot device, just before you end it all.
Ooooh! When I was in grad school, I had student insurance. The student insurance was managed by a company that does nothing but student insurance. Whenever I called (and sat on hold for minimum 20 minutes), they played a public health message over and over and over, targeted towards late teens. “A little sun can be fun, but too much sun exposure is a Bad Thing! You can get premature wrinkles, and even cancer! Especially when you’re exposed in your late teens! So use sunscreen!!” Well, dearies, I already got the wrinkles and it’s mid-winter in New England with a foot of snow on the ground!!! So pick up the damn phone!
The insurance rep from my doctor’s office called me after having been on hold herself for half an hour three days in a row and said, “I’m spending all my work time listening to advice about sunscreen. Sorry, you’ll have to handle this yourself because I can’t sit on hold anymore.”
Give me music any day. Even crappy music.
What’s even worse is when you’re on hold for (and I kept track) over 20 minutes and the hold music is the same two Beach Boys songs played on an endless loop.
:eek:
Nope, what’s worse is when you’re on hold for twenty minutes and the hold music is the same song in a loop… and you’re calling from another friggin damn country halfway accross the globe and fucking paying for every hellish minute of it. :mad:
Ah, Lilyofthevalley, I used to call insurance companies to get verification of coverage for patients. I really hate those health advice blurbs. I would count the times that the one recommending yearly pap smears came up per call, knowing that I would be calling dozens of times in the day. It averaged four rounds per call. At least I could do computer entry while I waited. That helped.
Apple has the best hold music ever. It’s like they have different channels. I had to call them for a problem no one seemed to be able to fix a few years back, so I was on hold a lot.
I liked the 80s channel, the funk channel and the classical channel.
Whenever I’m forced to listen to Smooth Jazz, I find myself contemplating it as if its a radio transmission from another planet: What part of human society does this music emanate from? I mean, listening to polka, I can imagine Mitteleuropans dancing around in embroidered costumes, and Chinese folk music can conjure up images of villagers pulling carp from a rive as junks ply though the mist, so what of this alien world of Smooth Jazz, which I assume is here in America, but to which I have no other access?
I’d have to live in an apartment or condo, but never a house, one as high rised and glass-walled as possible, preferably in some mythical Claifornia city with a marina view. Since much of the music is the same playlist I’ve been hearing since 1990, I’d still have a lot of black appliances and furniture, in keeping with the '80’s yuppie ambiance. I’d have to be good-looking, and I don’t mean movie star good-looking; not good enough: I mean daytime drama star/ good looking. In keeping with the daytime drama lifestyle, I’d have to have a high-paying but vague means of livelihood, such as “making deals,” or “signing contracts,” both of which terms would suffice on any resume in Smooth Jazz society. Business meetings would last 3-4 minutes, long enough to enjoy myself wearing expensive clothes in a Smooth-Jazzily furnished boardroom. Luches are taken out, amid a lot of sunlight, palms and brass fixtures. Suppers are either out or in, but always by candlelight. Breakfast is only coffee, but from an expensive, cutting ege designer appliance. Frequent vactions take one not merely to the warmer spots of the Caribbean, Mediterranean and SE Asian pleasure spots, but to their actual travel poster images.
There are no actual children in Smooth Jazz society but, by way of compensation, most romantic relationships are conducted at a level of maturity common to the average 12-year old. In Smooth Jazz society the women pout and the men smirk, but beyond this, effective communication detracts from the drama of life. The mechanical aspects of copulation would be, appropriatley, smooth and not made inelegant by flatus, menstruation, snoring, etc, and would be conducted with the proper use of condoms: expensive, cutting edge designer condoms, employed to the background music of Smooth Jazz.
I don’t so much dislike bad hold music as much as, as previously mentioned, the recordings that pause every once in awhile, STOP PLAYING ANYTHING, MAKE A CLICK, then announce “your call is important to us yeah, right, please hold on the line for the next available representative.” I KNOW I’m on hold, ass-fondlers, you dont need to make a CLICK that interrupts me and makes me think it might be a representative to tell me that, indeed, there is no representative.
But that’s not as bad as Florida’s Unemployment service line, if all representatives are currently busy, the system tells you to call later, then hangs up :eek: