Hello?
How many remember a time when you dialed "0" on your rotary dial and an actual, real live human being (always a female) would answer and help you find a number or a friend or a good restaurant or just about whatever you needed. I always felt that if my dog had fleas, she'd be the first one to go get a remedy and deliver it to my door. I suppose that would have been about as likely as talking to a real person nowadays when you dial "0" or 411, or for that matter any company number to try to gain information.
Dial a company number today or a cell phone company to pay your bill electronically or AT&T or even Busch Stadium to try to purchase tickets for next Sunday's game and you will go through a series of automated messages, sometimes a half dozen or more, before getting to your desired destination. If you're lucky, you'll get a human on about the fourth push of a button, but it may likely be someone sitting in India being utilized by a company that has "out-sourced" its work to barely English-speaking students whose goal it is to someday work in the states, and they most likely will. In the meantime, we are faced with struggling with trying to decipher what they are telling or selling us. I figure someday I'll have an appointment for a pap smear and I'll be looking at this same individual just over the stirrup...the same guy who called Missouri, "Mee-zoooo-dee" just a few short years before analyzing my innards.
I'm told that if you call United Airlines to make a reservation and you're hooked up with one of these "out-sourcers," you can tell them you prefer to speak to someone in America and they'll transfer you to a state-side English speaking ticket agent. If I could afford to travel, I'd do so. I fear that we're about to out-source our way right out of business!
A few years ago before the days of the "no call list," (upon which Minnie's name now appears) it was not unusual to receive two or three calls a week from MCI or AT&T or other long distance companies begging for my business. Usually it was a foreigner attempting to sell a package that they were obviously reading off a script. I used to enjoy putting them on hold. Sometimes I ran the vacuum while they hung on. It served as my only retaliation.
Brace yourself for 2008 during election time. We'll all be the recipients of pre-recorded pleas from various politicians trying to sway our vote their way. I haven't quite devised a method to retaliate against this method of madness just yet, but I'm working on it.
In the meantime, when the foreign solicitors somehow manage to get past the "no call" regulations, I first repeatedly ask them to repeat their message, over and over, and THEN I start the vacuum. It's amazing how clean my house gets when those calls start coming in!
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By now, I'd bet that the telemarketers have a "Don't Call" list of their own with "Yellow Rose" right on top! Ingenious!!
Good to "see" you. What bothers me more than being told to press "1" for English is to be told to press "1" for Spanish and "2" for English!!! Now that riles Minnie's feathers!
I'm right with you! Almost makes me want to call one myself if they just wouldn't block their numbers all the time. I'm on the second stanza of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." Practice makes perfect!