One of my pet peeves is phone music on hold.
Often I'm put on hold for several (or more) minutes when trying to contact a business, and after listening to the same repeated music (often distorted) for awhile, I'm ready to break something.
All I need is a periodic short beep to show that I'm still connected on hold.
Why do they think listening to some inane music is better?

 

Using power and energy interchangeably.

 

One of my pet peeves is phone music on hold.

I remember when a store played a radio station on hold. I was an engineer for the station.
The competing store bough a bunch of commercials to be played only during store hours. It was very effective to have commercials for the other store, about satisfied customers, played "on hold". That lasted two years.

Why do they think listening to some inane music is better?

Insane music reduces the phone complaints by 38%. Long holt times reduce the need for support by 52%. Not answering the phone at all reduces the calls by 100%.

Have a good day. RonS.

 

What is even worse is that often the audio is so distorted that it's completely unbearable!

 

Even worse are peddling infomercials:

“Do you know that over 85% of Americans with blue eyes will have toenail fungus before the age of 90? But don’t despair, your Worse Health pharmacist can provide you information about the vaccine. Ask your local WH store for details. Chest hair loss, mental diarrhea or crotch itching are common side effects. Talk to your doctor immediately if you have difficulty farting.”
“To continue in Spanish, press 2. For Serb-Croatian, press 3. For Farsi press 3. For English, you may consider relocating to Scotland.”

 

One of my pet peeves is phone music on hold.
Often I'm put on hold for several (or more) minutes when trying to contact a business, and after listening to the same repeated music (often distorted) for awhile, I'm ready to break something.
All I need is a periodic short beep to show that I'm still connected on hold.
Why do they think listening to some inane music is better?

The music is FAR down on my long list of pet peeves regarding answering systems. Occasionally (rarely) a system will ask if I want to listen to music or not. I appreciate the option, but I can tune out their music as background noise. One company, decades ago, actually had music that was nice to listen to -- it had a softened Celtic feel to it. I almost hated for them to pick up. For a while, some systems piped a local radio station at you and that was usually interesting; at least it wasn't monotonous and gave you a sense of connection to the place you were calling. That seems to have gone away since they had no control over what you actually heard and there were occasional issues that flared up. Plus, other companies started playing games by advertising on stations that they knew their competitors were piping to their customers, but I don't think that was every a significant factor.

Here's a few things that I dread when calling a business:

1) "We are experiencing heavier than normal call volume."

No matter what time you call, they ALWASY seem to be experiencing heavier than normal call volume.

Translation: We NEVER have enough staff to service calls in a reasonable time frame, but we'll lie to you and try to make you believe it's not our fault.

2) "Your call is very important to us."

Translation: Your call will be ignored in the order received, Please remain on hold and be ignored while we ignore everyone that called before you.

3) "Your estimated wait time is three minutes."

When systems first gave estimated hold times, they were pretty accurate. Now, they seem completely uncorrelated to actual wait times. On many occasions I've been given times of five minutes or less and then sat on hold for more than an hour.

4) No means to speak to a human.

Many systems make it intentionally difficult to speak to a human, others flat out make it impossible. But the ones I hate the most are those that give you an option to speak to a representative, then ask you to either describe your issue or select from a small set of options, and then proceed to not let you speak to a human, but just route you to yet another limb in their endless tree of automated crap.

5) Long lead in messages filled with information that is relevant to only a tiny fraction of callers.

I can't count the number of times I've had to sit through a detailed message about applying for some program (or something else) that has absolutely no bearing on why I am calling and can't be relevant to the overwhelming majority of people that are calling. If nothing else, add it to the list of options, "For information about applying for XYZ, Press 3",

 

Even worse are peddling infomercials:

“Do you know that over 85% of Americans with blue eyes will have toenail fungus before the age of 90? But don’t despair, your Worse Health pharmacist can provide you information about the vaccine. Ask your local WH store for details. Chest hair loss, mental diarrhea or crotch itching are common side effects. Talk to your doctor immediately if you have difficulty farting.”
“To continue in Spanish, press 2. For Serb-Croatian, press 3. For Farsi press 3. For English, you may consider relocating to Scotland.”

I always have an alternate soundtrack running in my mind on those things. Usually goes something like this:

Do you have fingernails that don't grow as fast as you'd like? Ask your doctor if Cuticizi is right for you. Side effects include heart attacks, stroke, dementia, and death. Don't take Cuticizi if you are allergic to it or don't want to die. Stop taking Cuticizi if you die or experience serious reactions.

One thing that we have to keep in mind is that the reason that they run these ads, is because they work. It is very rare that an ad campaign backfires (but it certainly does happened).

I remember when drug ads were first allowed on TV and they weren't allowed to even say what condition the drug was for (turns out they weren't prohibited from doing so, but the regulations about how much information they would have been required to provide would have taken far more time than the ad itself). Instead, they just had some beautiful beach scene with someone enjoying the sunset and the audience was told to ask their doctor if NewDrugIzi was right for them. I asked my doctor if people actually asked and he said that people asked all the time -- they have know idea what the drug is supposed to treat, but they want to know if they should be taking it.

 

And then there are the ones that tell you to "push # and we will call you back as soon as an agent is available". But you never get the call back...

 

And then there are the ones that tell you to "push # and we will call you back as soon as an agent is available". But you never get the call back...

I don't even attempt to use those, for just that reason. If I'm going to be chained to a phone waiting for a call back, I might as well stay on hold so that at least I keep my place in line.

Speaking of maddening experiences, I'm dealing with the IRS to resolve an issue and that has been infuriating.

I call and jump through their phone tree and then get put on hold for typically two hours. At that point, I speak with someone briefly (a couple minutes) at which point they decide that I need to be transferred to someone else. They give me a code which, they claim, will allow me to bypass the wait line. But it doesn't. I get dumped into another queue without ever being given the opportunity to enter that code. I sit on hold for more than an hour longer, and then get disconnected and have to start all over.

 

IRS, Wow!

The worst part? That they hold all the cards.

Hope you can resolve your issue without too much pain.

 

IRS, Wow!

The worst part? That they hold all the cards.

Hope you can resolve your issue without too much pain.

I've had several run-ins with the IRS and I've come out ahead each time. I've always convinced them that I was right and have almost always gotten more money back because they've had to pay me interest. In one case, they made an adjustment to my return that resulted in them increasing my refund by $600 that I wasn't owed. I sent them a check to return it to them along with an explanation of why I wasn't owed it. They returned it to me saying that the three-year statute had run and so the fact that I received an excess refund was now non-correctable. In this case, they disallowed my IRA contributions because I didn't have them entered onto the schedule I sent them (turns out I printed out a draft somehow and not the final form and I didn't check it clearly enough). That has resulted in them claiming that I owe them a couple thousand dollars, plus interest and penalties. I sent them an amended return, but whoever reviewed it apparently didn't grasp what the error was and thought I was trying to claim an investment loss (probably based on something that had been entered into the notes in the original adjustment). I expect to get it worked out in the end, but will likely have to get the Taxpayer Advocate involved. I had to do that once before and was quite impressed with their responsiveness and competence.

 

I also have, for many causes, a complex tax situation. For that reason I always hire an accounting professional to help me with my taxes.
Even so, when preparing my paperwork for this 2025 tax year, I spotted, by a mere chance, a mistake he had made on the 2024 tax return. He had to file an amended form, which resulted in me receiving a significantly larger refund.

But I fear, like a plague, the opposite: that someday a mistake could be made which would result in an underpayment.

 

I also have, for many causes, a complex tax situation. For that reason I always hire an accounting professional to help me with my taxes.
Even so, when preparing my paperwork for this 2025 tax year, I spotted, by a mere chance, a mistake he had made on the 2024 tax return. He had to file an amended form, which resulted in me receiving a significantly larger refund.

But I fear, like a plague, the opposite: that someday a mistake could be made which would result in an underpayment.

My tax situation is pretty involved, but not as bad as it could be. I own and operate three sideline businesses (one of which I started last year and is my first LLC, so that's a new wrinkle for me). It was a lot more involved when I was contracting full time and had my wife working for me, as well as running her own sideline business (managing my contracts and well as those for another person). I've found that the prior year's return is always a very good guide for the current year, though I always read the regs to see what has changed (and something always changes). None-the-less, once I have all of the information pulled together, it generally only takes me two or three hours to update my spreadsheet to generate the numbers for the returns and to file them out. Plus, I'm often able to find edge cases that I can take advantage of in which minor adjustments to my numbers (within the allowed range that I can move them over) I can sometimes increase my refund by a fair amount (one time by four hundred dollars, but the stars aligned that year). I tried a couple of tax software packages and I was able to beat them both, despite their claims. I was also able to beat the well-known tax service that my wife worked for. So I can't justify spending hundreds of dollars to get a worse result than I can do myself. Plus, it makes it so that I have a very good idea as the year goes along what I can and can't do (and should and shouldn't do) to end up in a good place. In addition, it makes it so that if I screw up and end up in a bad spot, it will at least be due to me screwing up.

 

Not really pet peeves just a few off the top of my head:
Putting an x in espresso.
Uttering a statement in the form of a question and an answer. "Am I impressed by that? No!"
The use of epicentre when centre is the correct word to use.
Saying "Can I get?" rather than "May I have".
Severe cases of Dunning Kruger.
Politicians.
HR.
Marketing.
Pseudo science.
Alternative medicine
I could go on

 

Journalists' units:
Weight in elephants
Volume in double-decker buses
Areas in either football pitches or size-of-Wales
Energy (or is it power?) in enough to boil a kettle or supply a town.

If you live in a country that doesn't have double-decker buses, or isn't proximal to Wales, or plays a different sort of football, what terms do your journalists use?
(Come to think of it - there aren't that many elephants in Britain)

 

Journalists' units:
Weight in elephants
Volume in double-decker buses
Areas in either football pitches or size-of-Wales
Energy (or is it power?) in enough to boil a kettle or supply a town.

If you live in a country that doesn't have double-decker buses, or isn't proximal to Wales, or plays a different sort of football, what terms do your journalists use?
(Come to think of it - there aren't that many elephants in Britain)

I don't so much mind the use of visualizable units to help the audience grasp the scale. What I do mind is that, in doing so, they so often make meaningless comparisons that create the wrong sense of scale. This is particularly common when rates are involved (such as the difference between power and energy). Just a week or so ago there was coverage of a high speed chase in which speeds of 140 mph were hit. The reporter remarked that that was about twice the size of Los Angeles County.

 

I don't so much mind the use of visualizable units to help the audience grasp the scale. What I do mind is that, in doing so, they so often make meaningless comparisons that create the wrong sense of scale. This is particularly common when rates are involved (such as the difference between power and energy). Just a week or so ago there was coverage of a high speed chase in which speeds of 140 mph were hit. The reporter remarked that that was about twice the size of Los Angeles County.

Did you get the story about iceberg A23A? Our media said that it started off the size of Greater London and ended up the size of the Isle of Wight. Now, my knowledge of British geography is pretty good, but I have no immediate idea how the sizes compare without looking at a map. And Greater London keeps getting bigger, but the Isle of Wight can't! Just telling me in square miles or km would have been much more meaningful. Or even just saying how many percent of its original size.

 

Did you get the story about iceberg A23A? Our media said that it started off the size of Greater London and ended up the size of the Isle of Wight. Now, my knowledge of British geography is pretty good, but I have no immediate idea how the sizes compare without looking at a map. And Greater London keeps getting bigger, but the Isle of Wight can't! Just telling me in square miles or km would have been much more meaningful. Or even just saying how many percent of its original size.

No, didn't see that story. Saying that it is the size of Greater London has SOME value since most people would visualize that as being the size of some large city that they are familiar with. That might be good enough if getting the notion across within an order of magnitude is good enough. But, for instance, if I translate Greater London Area to Greater Denver Area, assuming that London is roughly the size of Denver, it would be a huge error. Greater London is ~600 sq mi, while Greater Denver is ~8300 sq mi, or a factor of 14 larger. But, until I looked up the numbers and compared them, I would have thought that the London metro area was larger than Denver one.

But saying that it is the size of some island is going to be meaningless for most people since islands come in sizes spanning orders of magnitude. Telling the vast majority of people an area in square miles (or kilometers) would be very misleading once you get above a fairly small amount, since so few people can do rough squares or square roots on the fly. It would have been better to just tell them the linear dimension, such as it being roughly 30 miles across. Most people have a sense of these kinds of distances by visualizing comparable distances they are familiar with, such as to a neighboring town or between mile markers on a highway) and can then easily visualize an object that big across in comparison.

BTW, the London vs Denver comparison underscores a point that the proponents of public transit always seem to miss -- implementing a cost-efficient and practical public transit system in an area of 600 sq miles that has a population of about 9 million is a FAR cry from trying to do the same in an area that is 14 times as large with just one-third the population (i.e., a difference in population density approaching a factor of 50).

 

Saying "Can I get?" rather than "May I have".

I would always respond to my students when they asked, "Can I ask a question" with "Of course you can, you just did". I was always amused by the very puzzled look on their faces while they pondered what just went wrong. Some got it, others never did. Yeah, I know, I'm a bit of a smartass at times...

 

People who can’t stay in their traffic lanes, particularly around a corner where two lanes turn left (right in Great Britain?) There are several busy intersections in my area where this is the case. As often as not, the guy beside me simply crosses between the two lanes without looking. If I were not watching for them, I expect I would be hit every couple of days. In many of these cases, the lanes are clearly marked right around the turn, but they go right across the solid lines without signaling or watching out for traffic.