1. May experience a delay...

[jack]

There are two sorts of people listening to "We are experiencing a high volume of calls at the moment. You may experience a delay.". People trying to achieve something in their life, and people who just want to listen to the message.

You might think the latter was just sarcasm. But even if there aren't any people, I think it's a sort of people.

And in actual fact, when writing the first sentence, I actually considered ringing back just to transcribe the message accurately, so it IS possible someone would just want to listen to the message.

If I go on, every sentence needing a sentence to explain it, this'll go on forever. Literally. It's called a Markov chain. Look it up, people. Unless one of the sentences is explained by a previous sentence. Or itself. But being explained by itself isn't really "needing a sentence to explain it". But then, a pre-existing sentence isn't either.

Anyway, there are two sorts of people. Almost all of them actually ARE experiencing a delay. Per se. Qua delay. Ipso facto. Et cetera. A very few of them may NOT be experiencing a delay. But no-one MAY be experiencing a delay. Why pay someone to record a message that is ALWAYS false simply by listening to it?

Why not go the whole hog and say something like "We are experiencing a high volume of calls at the moment. This statement is false."? At least that would be an INTERESTING wasteful inanity.

Comments

[mair_in_grenderich]

so not /me/ who's on crack

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hey, trying to upgrade a phone can't be crack, nobody would pay for an experience that was NEVER enjoyable.

Seriously, do I overreact to these messages? Doesn't everyone listening to that any times more than once explode?

if i use my 'ringing' icon can you pretend it's a phone...

[mair_in_grenderich]

you know what I hate about them? I hate their implication that your time is so unimportant that it's somehow okay for you to spend forty-five minutes listening to hold music. Also, I want menus for the hold music, and I want to be able to turn off the adverts that I've heard sixty-five times before because I've been waiting for someone to talk to me for an hour.

my calls of, er, that nature have typically been made from phone boxes, so that shit really pisses me off, it's not like you can squidge the phone under your ear or stick it on speakerphone and get on with your life until someone finds time to answer. and it's probably raining.

my mum really, really hates automated menus. She has been known to fling phones across the room in frustration when one menu's led to another's led to another's led to... we ended up with a system where Cat (who doesn't mind menus) would press buttons until a person came on the line, and then hand the phone over...

there's just something about this post that is crack though ;)

Re: if i use my 'ringing' icon can you pretend it's a phone...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I hate lots of their implications. Actually, the real waiting wasn't too bad here, it *was* the "give them more money" line. It's the collection of messages they think *might* be useful, and the menu options that don't seem to quite tessellate...

Letting you choose would be GREAT. It surely can't be much more expensive to them compared to the system in the first place? And maybe warning you five seconds before or something, so you can relax and not wonder every time the music fades out if something important is going to happen.

Or, hell, they ring you back! And skip you if you don't answer. Surely that'd be fairly easy to do.

Re: if i use my 'ringing' icon can you pretend it's a phone...

[mair_in_grenderich]

Or, hell, they ring you back!

Some of the phone menus I've talked to recently (ISPs) have done that.

Re: if i use my 'ringing' icon can you pretend it's a phone...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, that would make sense, ISPs often having a higher association with techies (who both can do that sort of thing, and appreciate reducing uncertainty...)

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I hate silly phone messages too, but with me it depends very much on what sort of music they make me listen to in between. If it's silly messages and pop music, by the time someone actually answers, mongoose is showing her little teeth. On the other hand if they politely intersperse it with Bach (or even Mozart, come to that), mongoose doesn't mind so much. Mongoose is usually playing Mini Match on the Power Pets site with the other hand while she's waiting anyway. :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The music here was actually acceptable (it was something modern, but seemed to have some sort of soul rather than just being painful or the most generic possible). That alone pre-empted out a large chunk of my rant, though see reply to flurble.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

One phone call many years ago they were playing Monty Python. The actual point of the call was much more boring.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

ROFL. It could hardly live up to that.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the message alludes to the quantum mechanical nature of the universe?

[thethirdvoice.livejournal.com]

you may experience a delay...

...or you may never get through at all!

(exciting, isn't it?)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Being a mathematician, I'd probably count that as an infinite delay :)

[thethirdvoice.livejournal.com]

But as an engineer, I have to treat it as a separate case. Otherwise things tend to fall over (like people who stay on the phone for a long time).

The other option being that you are permitted to experience a delay.

[(Anonymous)]

No, it makes perfect sense. You may be experiencing a delay. Some are, some aren't. The group as a whole is uncertain. "May" is a synonym for "might" as well as a permission word.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OK, I suppose that makes it true, in some sense. But can you still say it conveys no information to the listener?