One place I've dealt with lists different things and asks you for voice commands, as in "pay a bill", "check account balance", "customer service". I found that, although phrases such as "bite me" and "go sit on a ___" get you an "I'm sorry. I did not understand. Please re-state your command", a good "I WANT TO SPEAK WITH A REAL PERSON" gets you put on hold (pack a lunch) to speak to a real person. I've since been told that hitting the "0" works too.

Technology problem...oy. I get an outsourced customer service somebody who is qualified to troubleshoot problems caused by me not being able to locate the "on" button or determining which end (either mine or the computer's) should be up. I generally have a more complicated problem. They refer me to the outsourced tech guy, who gets a little more technical, and is capable of troubleshooting problems involving re-booting (we're back to the "on" button again, but it's a way more technical use of it), cleaning caches and changing settings in Control Panel that have absolutely no effect other than letting me know this person is reading from a checklist that says, "If that didn't work, tell the customer to fuck around with the settings in Control Panel. Tell the person to reboot again and call you back when if that doesn't work).

So I call back TO THE FIRST, BASIC NUMBER, and list all the shit I've done and all the morons techies I've spoken to because I'm makin' notes and takin' names. In short (or maybe not so much): Hi, I called and talked to Ellie Mae who referred me to Paul in tech help who had me change my default font to Courier Regular, 10-pt and re-boot, which I did, but it didn't help. So if you could just refer me to someone WHO CAN HELP I'd really appreciate it.

I get referred to Beth, who asks me for the serial number on my flux capacitor so she can bounce a graviton beam off it and so reset it. I do that, she does that, and everything is wonderful.

It took her 30 seconds of customer questioning and beam bouncing. It took me an hour of talking to stupid people who have higher paying jobs than I do.

These days, I just do all the stuff before I call. Sometimes, to show initiative, I even change my wallpaper.