Bad muzak I can handle. It's when they interrupt it every ten seconds to remind you that there's still the same number of people ahead of you that really gets my goat. And I need that goat!
On a phoneline service that I have to call about twice a month, you also get a frequent click and a second-long pause in the music, that makes you think you’ve connected to an operator. Given how the service is outright malicious to its users, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was hard coded into the system to keep callers on edge.
Sometimes that music is going harder than it has any right to though! I honestly love a lot of that shit nowadays, vaporwave brought my childhood back in a strangely welcome fashion
My favorite call center experience was me, three of my friends, and my youth group leader calling some company and being sent to voicemail because it was after hours. He kept calling back, trying to get a real person but it was just the same "for customer support, press 1" bullshit.
Our leader started talking smack about the company while navigating the option tree of pre-recorded options and a janitor picked up the phone and revealed that all calls are broadcasted into the office, even before you reach the point where you actually leave a recorded message. Because the janitor was the only one there, he could hear our leader badmouthing the company from across the room.
I was given some advice a while back to always keep your phone on mute when going through the keypad directory. Many countries don't have many restrictions on recording calls so companies record everything that is permissible.
