Press 87 to accidentally disconnect yourself

Every thirty seconds I get another "All agents are still busy.  Please remain on the line.  Your call is very important to us."  I timed it.  It's not like there's a lot else I could do with the phone glued to my ear, trying to ignore the syrupy sax music burbling across the line.  I called this morning, waded through the "Press 1 to hear this in English," stuff, entered the account number ("Press 1 to enter a Social Security Number; Press 2 if you know your account number ") and finally got hung up on by the machine because it was five minutes before official opening time.

So I'm typing one handed and waiting again.  You'd think a person could go more than thirty seconds before needing reassurance to keep waiting.  It's really not that long.  Reading this took more time.

I wonder if they ever record what people say when they're on hold.  I'd love to hear it.  You have to let some of the frustration out when you've been waiting twenty minutes going through menu after menu, then you get dumped in a mailbox that disconnects you because its too full to take messages.  It's been yelled at all morning and it just won't take any more.  It's on strike.  So you get cut off, try pounding the zero button in the hope of getting a live human, and find they've wired the zero to stick you in a special menu for impatient people that takes twice as long to disconnect you and never gets to a real person either.

What we really need is an automated system on our end.  Something to do battle with the corporate voice menu from Hell and beep when an actual person gets on the line, freeing us to wander around the house and do useful stuff with that ten to sixty minutes of dead time, like call the insurance company and deal with their voicemail system...