By now, in this day and age, where toddlers play with cell phones, everyone has gotten used to this: being put on hold for long periods of time or being transferred from one operator to the other and ending up with no answer. It has occurred to me many times. Unfortunately, this happens even in cases of emergency!
As far as our schools and institutions are concerned, I always hesitate to call. I know it will take awhile until I can actually talk to a person, so I choose to walk to the place instead (that way I can get some exercise too). It simply should not be this way! This week, for example, I had my backpack stolen from my work office on campus. As soon as I realized it, two minutes later, not knowing what else to do, I called campus security. The first thing I heard on the other end of the line was, “can you please hold?” After waiting for awhile, the call dropped! The second time I called, I was able to tell them what had happened, and the security did show up. Next, I called the bank to block my account, and by the time I reached a real person and gave them my information, the call dropped, so I had to start all over again!
A reasonable explanation might be that many of these places are short of staff, but what does that do to the customer, or the person who is put on hold after calling 911?
Hi Flamur, sorry to hear about your backpack!
I definitely hear what you’re saying and am neither a fan of automated phone answering nor my calls getting dropped (both have happened to me plenty of times) but the “can you please hold” doesn’t bother me as much. Certainly if one can’t hold it’s possible to say no (though probably the person is in actuality saying “Hold, please” and is not really asking) and the people on the other end of the call definitely should be giving priority to people who are there in person over people who are calling in, in my opinion. Now, whether or not this is actually the case is another matter!
I would love to hear more about your experiences sometime, especially at home and in Switzerland. I’m glad we took the EU class together.
Write on,
-Aaron-
Hi Aaron, I agree with you on that! I guess for me that is hard if it is a case of emergency.
Thanks for your comments and hope to see you around. As for my story, I will be doing a presentation sometime soon, in the next 2 weeks, so look for my flier or FB note, if you use FB.
Take care