Can't Stop the Music

One of the things I have to do in the course of doing purchase orders is phone vendors for quotes. (My regular vendors I have e-mails for; it’s much simpler to cut and paste the requirement and fire it off to them asking for a price.) Naturally doing all these phone calls one has fun with the wonders of voice mail. Someday I'm hoping to hear "If you want to speak to our sales department, press 1. If you want to speak to our support department, press 2. If you want our dial-by-name directory, press 3. If you are sick to death of these voice instructions, press 4."

Actually, the directional messages are okay. It's the on-hold music that drives me nuts. Sometimes you get lucky and the background music is some mellow old jazz, easy listening, new age, or lively classical arrangement. CompUSA's hold "music" was actually product plugs interspersed with their radio commercials, which were at least usually amusing.

But too many times it's music played too loud, or some intensely irritating twangy, wail-y country type music. Put in one call today and was assailed by the loudest, most dissonant jazz/new age type composition I'd ever heard. I like new age, but this was simply obnoxious. I had to lower the volume on my phone (which, thankfully I can do), but then of course when the "real person" finally picks up, you can't hear them. (This became more annoying when the vendor took a full six minutes to pick up the line.) Several months back I was blasted with rock music so loud that even turning the sound down didn't help–I had to pull the phone about two inches away from my ear before I could stand it. If I didn't have to call them for business reasons, I would certainly not phone them again.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 2:37:00 PM

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