Our Options Have Changed ...

I work on the telephone all day. My job involves calling health insurance companies such as Blue Cross, Gateway, Cigna, Aetna, etc. Get the picture? Now if your job involves calling on the phone, do you get the packaged answer. "Please listen to this entire message as our options have recently changed." Now I am wondering, how often do this options change. And did they change at every business world-wide? Do they honestly think that people really want to listen to some monotone voice go over everything from A to Z when C is all you want??? How long does it take to get a "real" person? Let me tell you, some of these places make you go through as many as ten options just to get the elevator music and sit on hold for another half hour because "All Our Agents are busy ..." What happened to all the unemployed people? How about putting them to work at minimum wage answering and fielding questions so the rest of us don't have to waste our "better paid" time sitting there like a dummy waiting for someone only to find out that this was the wrong option, then they transfer you and you start all over again.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who hates this. And then you come home to call in about your phone or gas bill (God forbid Comcast), and you go through the same thing on your personal time which is always worth more than your work time.

Of course without hold time, I wouldn't know that if I stepped down and moved the ladder a few inches instead of leaning, I wouldn't fall. Or how about the spiel on alcohol abuse and what numbers to call. I already know I need eight glasses of water a day and I need to get my annual mammorgram. Do these places honestly think hospital employees call there for nonsense information? Oh yeah, I love the ones that play the church organ music (Gateway) and I already know my call is very important to someone. . . so important that I have been on hold forever.

Well, this is my job and I like that paycheck so I guess I'll keep putting up with this. But I don't have to like it!!!