What the Heck Happened to Customer Service?

a photo from fevergirl208 on flikr

You know those days when everything is going wrong and makes you angry?  This is one of those days.  I am extremely tired, just cleaned the bathroom, desperately need to buy milk, and I have to go to work in a couple hours, which means I need to make lunch AND dinner by then.  To top things off, an automated voice from my bank left a message on my phone to inform me that there may have been fraudulent charges made on my debit card.  First, I have no time to call the number back and deal with this mess.  Second, today of all days I feel no desire to converse with human beings let alone automated machine voices.  I loath automated machines with a hateful, fiery passion.  I don’t know anyone who would jump to say, “I get to talk to an automated machine!  This is the best day ever!!!!!”  Honestly, with so many people out of work and so many angry customers, why not hire real people to speak with customers?

Since, companies are extremely cheap and could care less about their customers they resort to using automated machines.  My experience today included calling the number left on my voicemail and wasting my time speaking to a useless machine that didn’t help me at all.  The evil creature demanded I enter my debit card number.  I complied and the monster “growled” at me with his monotone voice and ordered me to enter the last four digits of my social security number.   Again I cooperated, but then the beast spoke again.  He listed the suspicious charges, but I missed them!  Oh no!  “Press star to hear this again.  Press one to hear your account balance.  Press three to report a lost or stolen card.” he muttered.  I pressed “*” intently, but nothing happened.  The same message repeated again. “**********************************” I pounded into my cell phone, but the merciless monster continued to taunt me by repeating his message over and over again until I hung up the phone in frustration.

I now sit defeated in my living room all curled up on the couch with my laptop writing out my frustrations with my hair in a messy bun, no make-up, and hints of stress-induced acne on my face.  I haven’t done my homework, I don’t have food and need to make lunch and dinner ASAP, I have completely lost all the sanity I once possessed, and someone might be stealing my money and I can’t do anything about it because my bank lacks the decency of supplying adequate customer service.  This is yet another Saturday for a college student merely trying to survive.  If only I had some milk.