Your Call Is Very Important To Us


Thank you for calling overbloated domain registrar dot com. Press 2 if you are a current customer. Press 2 for technical support. Press 1 for website support. Press 4 for domain hosting support. Press 1 if you know your customer number. Press 5 if you’re still listening. Press 9 to speak to someone in Klingon. Press 3 to hear about other companies that just answer the phone when you call and don’t send you to robot hell.

Thank you! Your estimated hold time is twenty minutes. A customer service representative will be with you shortly. The last two sentences contradict each other, but please hold the line anyway.

If you would like to wait without hold music, please press 1. Otherwise, remain on the line and enjoy our hold music, specially chosen for you, our target demographic. It’s a jaunty, upbeat mix of 90’s swing and neo-retro big band.

While you’re holding, have you ever wondered what does the music you sit on hold to says about you? You’re currently listening to Hell by the band Squirrel Nut Zippers. They were popular for like a minute in the 90s during the short-lived swing revival. This says that you are no longer considered young. You are probably in your 30’s or headed there in a bullet train with no brakes. As a potential agent of “The Man”, you are not to be trusted.

Perhaps you’d like to call the bank on your second phone while holding? You might as well, because that twenty minute hold time estimate was seriously a lie. When you get through their automated system, you’ll be listening to the totally radical sounds of the 80’s. Don’t get excited; You won’t hear any Cyndi Lauper or The Cure or anything decent. No, it’s the Pointer Sisters and pre-crack Whitney Houston for you. If you’re lucky, maybe a little Michael McDonald, for that yuppie-with-a-soul feeling. You are now a middle-class, middle-aged elevator music enthusiast. You enjoy tapping your finger on your desk while on hold and quietly whispering the words to these karaoke favorites while mourning the loss of your taste in music. You’re also overweight.

No, that’s far too depressing. Just hang up with them. You can can better service by physically leaving your house and going to the bank anyway. Why don’t you take this time to find out what the holdup is on that t-shirt with the snarky saying on it that you ordered from that hip, irreverent t-shirt company? Perhaps their hold music will reflect your youthful, visceral wit. Press 1, press 4, press 2… Ah, there it is. Contemporary butt rock. Power chords in 4/4 and a singer who thinks a southern drawl makes him edgy. They dress metal and sneer in their music videos, so that must mean they’re serious musicians. Clearly, caller, you have your finger on the pulse of youth. You enjoy Jagermeister, rock radio station remotes and the Vans tour. You are an individual, just like everybody else.

Oh, crap, your cell phone just lost connection. That music you’re hearing now is the sound of your teeth gnashing together. Please hold.

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Barry Robb is a starving web designer, internet marketer and webmaster/producer/co-co-host of a certain pop culture webshow. He hates being put on hold, but secretly enjoys hold music.

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