I’ve always wanted to say something about this subject, yet there was always something that came up that seemed to be more important.  But this past weekend was the last straw.

I’m talking about when you try to get a telephone number from the information operator.  Did I say ‘information operator’?  I meant to say information computer.  Believe or not, there was a time when there were such things as real live information operators.

These days you have to deal with annoying computers that invariably get it wrong and you have to repeat the process sometimes a half dozen times or more and when the information computer finally gets you the number it is either still the wrong number or when they connect you it turns out to be another wrong number or you get a hang-up.  And the charge is a minimum of $2.00 per number.  And if you want credit for the wrong number that the computer gave you, then you have to go through the process of calling back to get a real live operator to state your problem to and then maybe they’ll give you the credit for their screw up.  And think of all the time you had to waste on something so simple as getting a telephone number.

So what is my gripe?   It started when I dialed 411 and asked for a number whereupon the information computer asked me in what city and state am I looking for a number.  I said “Los Angeles, California”. It was a simple request and I don’t speak with a heavy or foreign accent.  Next it asked me for the name of the party or the name of the business I am trying to reach, whereupon I said “Tesla Motors”.  I made it a point to speak intelligibly and clearly.  I was then given a choice of three numbers with the instruction to say the number that most closely represents the business that I am trying to call.  Well, none of those names were anything remotely like “Tesla Motors in Los Angeles, California”.  The three names might as well have been from three different planets, not including Earth.

By now I am starting to fume and I am ready to smash the phone on the floor but I decide to hang up instead.  I try to calm down before I repeat the process but this time I say to myself that I am going to fool the computer and ask for an operator.  The one way conversation starts off cordially enough but the information computer is still insisting that I tell it the name of the city and state.  At this point I simply say in a loud voice, ‘operator, agent, live person’ but the information computer is very insistent and so I continue to repeat my request for an ‘operator, agent or live person’ in a louder voice, all to no avail.  By now I am really beginning to lose my patience.  I know that I am only talking to an inanimate object without a brain, unless you can call some basic computer instructions a brain.  The information computer is still rambling in its request for the names of the city and state while babbling off names of companies that I never heard of.  Now I start to really lose it and forget that I’m talking to a machine and I start calling the information computer a fucking idiot.

Then I start thinking, what if this conversation is recorded for ‘quality control’?  Then what?  Will the phone company or the NSA arrest me?  Why would they arrest me? It’s a fucking computer, right?  So I decide to try once more but this time I’ll be nice, even though the information computer is still a fucking idiot (or the ones who designed them).

This time I get to the ‘operator, agent or live person’ and she actually says to me,  “You’re trying to reach Tesla Motors in Los Angeles, California?”  Now I am truly puzzled because it appears that they knew all along who I was trying to reach.  And so I answered in the affirmative and before I knew what was happening I was being connected, or so she said.  But as fate would have it, the number that I thought I was being connected to was in fact a wrong number.  At this point I said to myself, “fuck it”, and then looked it up myself on my iPad.

So what is the solution to this extremely annoying practice that is not only costing people money but more importantly, their time?  The first is to appoint a congressional committee to  investigate the matter (as though we don’t have enough congressional committees) and then pass a law that will fine all of these telephone companies that use this feature, up the wazoo, until they fix the problem.  The second solution is to ban the use of computers for providing information and go back to real live information operators.

Let me know what you think.