Oh Hallelujah

After reading several articles written by other writer's here on PNN about their experiences with voice response systems I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I wrote this article on another site back in July of 2007.

From a very addictive internet user that has been offline for three days I can only say, "Oh Halleujah"!   It all started this past Sunday morning around 6 a.m. when I tried to access the internet from my computer after being in Detroit, Michigan for nine days. Much to my surprise I could not, I repeat, could not gain access.   Immediately my trembling hand reached for the telephone to call Comcast. I felt as if I was making a 911 call in the middle of the night under the most trying conditions. My mouth was dry, I was sweating, and as stated, my hands were trembling.

It seemed as if the phone on the other end was ringing for an eternity before I received an answer upon which time a robot was speaking to me. I didn't need a cold, heartless, none feeling robot right now. I needed a caring, compassionate, understanding human being to speak to. One that could soothe my troubled soul, that could speak words of encouragement, one that that could fix my problem, and my broken heart. Instead I get a robot that demands I press the right buttons, and until I do I cannot proceed. Now my emotions erupt into rage , but I realize that I must get ahold of myself so I can proceed to a human. The robots had me boxed in so I had to submit to their will, but not before I left them know exactly what I thought of them. I called them names, I called their mother names, and included every family member I could think of.  Mean, nasty, very descriptive names that left no doubt that I was on the verge of a meltdown, and I wasn't going to be responsible for what I would do if I could get my hands on them robots. To make matters worse, I had to speak to the robots before I could go any further.

The robot was a woman with a pleasant voice, but behind that pleasant sounding voice was a cold, calculating machine with no feelings whatsoever towards a broken hearted, frustrated human. I'll never forget the sound of that female voice that made me answer questions. "O.K., let me see if I can help you", she said. "Answer these questions by saying yes or no". "If you can't gain access to the internet, say, I can't access the internet". I replied by firing off a few descriptive words of what I thought her mother looked like, and ended by telling her that if I could access the internet I wouldn't be listening to her humiliating, and abusing me upon which she said, "I didn't understand your answer, let's try again"! I could sense her laughing at me,  and I knew down deep inside she understood exactly what I had said, but she just didn't care. So reluctantly I did exactly what she said which brought her to yet another statement, and then another question. I answered her questions one by one until finally she said, "Do you need to speak to a technician"? I almost blurted out another long line of what I wanted to do to her, but I maintained myself and answered yes. She then told me to push 2, and I would be directed to a technician. Now I was getting somewhere, at least I thought I was! I heard the ringing sound, and just knew a real, live, caring human was going to answer, and save me from these robots.

Not to be, another robot with a male voice was demanding that I listen to him. Demanding that I unplug the router box, wait a full minute, plug it back in, and I'll probably be up on line again. Once again I lost it! Now I was on my feet, arms reaching out to make contact with his neck, my foot going to his knee cap, my brain was locked in to the destroy robot mode when I realized he was far away, and unreachable. When I came to my senses, I could hear him laughing at me knowing he was not in danger, and a deranged human on the other end of the line was spazzing out once again!  He was still laughing when I heard the voice of a human on the other end asking how he could help me. It sounded so distant at first, but as he asked me again I was able to gather myself, and with a trembling voice I began to tell this human my problem. Finally someone who cared, and could get me up and running again, so I thought!  

He, the human, couldn't help me. It would require a technician to come to my house to fix the problem. At first I was delighted when the human said, "I'll schedule a Tech right now". "Great", I replied as I wiped the tears from my eyes, and began to feel better already, whereas the human told me the Tech would come to my house on Tuesday, between the hours of  2 and 5 p.m. What! I couldn't believe what I was hearing so I asked the human to repeat what he had just said. When he repeated it I became enraged once again  !

Three days without the internet, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? Doesn't this human understand that I have a business on line? Even the business isn't important, it's the fact that I can't access the internet for three days. Don't you understand that I'm an online junkie, and without access to the internet I may go totally insane, and do you want to be responsible for that? I then changed tactics by sobbing uncontrollably, by begging this human to please send help today, not Tuesday. He apoligized for not being able to help at that instant, but the only available time slot was on Tuesday between 2 and 5 p.m.

I changed tactics again by threatening to take my business to Verizon. Really, what was I going to gain on a Sunday morning with no access to the internet. I realized immediately that I was blowing smoke up my own butt , and this human had heard this one before so that wasn't going to work either so I slowly submitted to the fact that it would be Tuesday between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m. before I could gain access to the internet.

For those three days I had nervous twitches, and bouts of depression. I was irritable, periods of complete breakdown where upon I would cry uncontrollably, couldn't sleep, didn't want to eat, and had no energy at all, but most of all, I kept hearing the voices of the robots. I couldn't get them out of my head. Those tormenting, sarcastic voices just kept bouncing around in my head until I thought I would go crazy. I had nightmares, and cold sweats from those voices, and nothing that I did could make them go away until Tuesday between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m. came.

At 5:15 p.m. yesterday the Comcast trucks arrived. I had weathered the storm, and now these humans would give me access to the internet. I was battered, and bruised,  but I survived. Two trucks, two humans, and a new cable installed had me up,and back on line again, "Oh Hallelujah"!!!!  Now that it's over I feel much better, but I just can't deal with robots!

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