I hate automated attendants!

Thank you for calling Blorte Technologies -- the leader in non-linear coherent phase cancelling napkin dispenser systems. Your call is very important to us. (But not so important that we would have a real person available to answer it.)

This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes. (The guys in the back room get such a bang of out listening to what you say when you think you're on hold.)

Please listen carefully because our menu options have changed. (They actually changed back in 1987, but if we get you to tie up the phone line longer, we don't have to take as many calls.)

If you know your party's extension you may enter it at any time. (Which is why we don't release our in-house extension list.)

For a company directory, press the octothorpe key. (We could have said the pound key, but we wanted to impress you by knowing the original Bell System name for the button. Not that it matters anyway: we transliterated each name from English to Russian to Koine Greek to Arabic and back to English, so they now consist exclusively of the letters C, Z, V and Y. "Jones", for example, is encoded "CZYCVVYZ". Good luck.)

To speak with Sales, press "1" now. (Transfers you to an endless loop of the first 26 seconds of "Summer" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" interrupted by periodic warnings to stay on the line.)

For customer support on the Microfleem 3000 product line, press "2" now. (The product doesn't exist, but it sounds good. This option rolls you to a voicemail box that hasn't been checked since Bill Clinton's first term.)

For customer support on the Macrofleem 2670 series, press "3" now. (Transfers to a call center in Pakistan. Caller-ID equipment automatically harvests your phone number so that other Pakistani workers can call you when you are in the middle of important work to renew your free subscription to a trade magazine you never heard of.)

For all other calls, please stay on the line. (This transfers you over to a silent circuit, punctuated every few minutes by several clicks and a brief blast of ring tone to make it sound like the call is actually going somewhere. We take bets to see how long people will wait before hanging up. The record is three hours and eighteen minutes; it would have been longer, but the janitor unplugged the phone system so he could plug in the floor buffer.)

Thank you for calling, and have an extraordinary day! (That'll make 'em gag!)

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Coming soon... the true story about getting equipment shipped from a manufacturer about 175 miles away. Won't be today, though -- I'm not allowed to use the words that are coming to mind right now. Suffice it to say that neither CW station is on the air yet. The dots are well and truly agitated.

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This is just too freaky. Not ten seconds after I posted this installment, my phone rang. It was Nigel calling to renew my free subscription to Servo Test and Measurement magazine. At least I think that's what he said... the background noise and his rather thick accent made it tough to be sure.