In lieu of war, recorded message may be just the ticket

It seems to me that President Bush, in his haste to eliminate the tyrant Saddam Hussein, is overlooking a foolproof way to get the job done swiftly and at absolutely no cost in money, men or materiel.

The president has but to maneuver the Iraqi dictator into ringing up the customer service department of most any major American business. After the old coot has been driven nuts via recorded message while trying to get a real live human being to hear his complaint, he almost surely will direct one of his palace guards to just shoot him, and that will be that.

This brilliant solution to the Hussein problem presented itself recently after I had conducted business with the telephone company and a credit card outfit on the very same day. Talk about your double jeopardy.

Two such simple tasks would figure to be routine, one might logically suppose. Make a couple of phone calls, talk to a couple of understanding customer service people and be done with it. Piece of cake. And one would be dead wrong, having failed to take into account the insipid Robot Factor – the all-pervasive business practice of employing cold, impersonal machinery in lieu of human beings to deal with the public. Please just shoot me, indeed.

The experience brought home once again that there exists a strong case for stringing up the guy who invented the telephonic recorded message and letting him twist slowly in the wind – alongside the corporate managers who, ostensibly to save a buck, allow the barbarism to be inflicted upon their paying customers.

I am aware that I have plowed this ground before, to no apparent effect. But, really now. I defy you to cite a business practice that can more efficiently bring the blood of your average bear to a boil.

You know the drill: There’s the robot’s directions to press buttons until you’re blue in the face. The cold realization that you’ve lost all control of the situation. The befuddlement that sits in when the robot starts listing your options and you can’t decide whether to press a button right now or wait for something better to come along later in the spiel. Who knows, perhaps the “Press 8” option contains the key to busting out of this mechanical purgatory and into the land of the living, and by falling for the old “Press 3, now” smoke screen in the hope of getting the torture over with you’ve played squarely into the hands of the dark forces conspiring to push you over the edge. (Seemingly acknowledging the confusion it regularly sows among the population, one company’s robot has added a new instruction to its list: “If you can’t remember what you’ve just heard, Press One,” or words to that effect.)

One thing that seems never to have occurred to those who concoct the menu of options for The Recorded Voice to offer up is that the customer might have a concern not covered by the script. Surely there can be few happy campers amongst the clientele when there’s no way to get a word in edgewise, and no one on the other end of the line to hear it anyway. When this happens, I ring up the operator to see if we can somehow find a real person, preferably not comatose, to hear my tale of woe. But that can backfire, as well.

When I called the credit card company and got its head robot I had to answer its questions relative to name, account number and the like before its one-monologue-fits-all kicked in. “As of today, your current balance is. …,” it began, taking me through payment options and God knows what-all. Which, of course, is not what I was calling to inquire about, since there was no current balance. So I dialed the Verizon operator, who found a number for the outfit’s “customer satisfaction” (!) department, and hooked me up. “As of today, your current balance is…” the robot informed me after the name-rank-and-serial number preliminaries had been dispensed with. Back to Square One.

Eventually, through dawged perseverance, and after warning a second telephone operator against connecting me to another disembodied voice (“Sir, I just give you the number. I’m not responsible for who answers,” he informed me, frostily), I got a live one down at company headquarters and he graciously answered my questions.

Of course, he then turned me over to some telemarketing smoothie who tried to sell me some auto insurance I didn’t need. By then I was so grateful to be conversing with a human being I not only listened to the man’s entire pitch but thanked him for breathing in my ear.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.