Dear Reader: I have been to the place where dreams die.

Oh boy. Not even fifteen words in and I have sunk into great hyperbole. Such is the impunity of the internet. I have not been to the graveyard of dreams, nor have I even seen it. I have heard it though—the mechanical inflection of syllables asking you press one for English or marque el numero dos para español.

Much has been made of numero dos, chiefly by Lou Dobbs. I think this is misguided. There’s something comfortable in the thought that while you may be brutalized by a disembodied voice, it at least has the decency to do so in a language of your own choosing. No one has been this generous since Utah banned death by firing squad.

Ok this is a bit extreme. And yet—how can I be fair? Calling your utility company is an adventure in absurdity. Your opponent has no rational motive and consistently claims to be acting in your interest. There is no obvious explanation except a zealous worship of irony. What else could explain the great length companies go to make you suffer for using the very product they are charging you for?

Like most sandbagging, it begins reasonably enough. A few more phone options, but who are you kidding? The only ones that work are “pay your bill” or “buy more from us.” We can try hitting eight to repeat the options, but that’s just hoping some deus ex machina will magically solve your problem. You can get better odds on Bambi’s mother surviving the movie. Time for the nuclear option. Hit 0 and hope it summons a human.

Once upon a time, the 0 key corresponded to operator. In some places, like Never Never Land, this is still the case. However, the civilized world has shifted towards training computer voices to issue peremptory commands that insist you choose one of the listed options. This is not helpful. Some brave souls have sought to hold the line and outwait the repeated prompts. You can’t outwait a computer that doesn’t eat.

But you can’t escape. Give up now, and your petition dies unanswered. Pursue and what awaits you is an abyss of wasted minutes, hours, even days. Drown, or wait to drown. Either way, the boat is sinking. What’s worse—the band has quit and the captain has ordered jazz muzak to take their place.

It reminds me of economics and opportunity cost—the idea that at any given moment, your time might be applied more profitably doing something else. I applied this concept liberally in college to justify a variety of mind enhancing and stupefying activities, and the attendant recovery periods spent in bed. I thought I was clever until I found that every company is well aware of opportunity cost. Ever wondered why the phone company never fixed that recurring error on your bill? They are too busy spending their time creating offshore tax havens to enrich executives (Enron), gambling on intangible financial assets (AIG), or buying expensive hookers (the Office of Senator David Vitter) to pay someone to fix your problem the first time. In addition, cell phone and power companies can happily rack up fractions of a cent while you roam or use that nice new cordless phone of yours to call them—again and again.

It would be ethical to note that I have never been put on hold by the office of David Vitter. However, he did pull a Spitzer.

It isn’t just about making money while you wait. Long waits also weed out the unimportant complaints. If you don’t have an hour to navigate through the hedge maze of automated menus, you don’t have an important problem. Additionally it erodes your confidence and ability to reason. While you wait you doubt the merit of your problem and start equating “fixing this overcharge” to Quixotic. As your will falters and mind fatigues, the only thing keeping you going is the burning feeling of injustice. It seems helpful until you get a customer service rep on the line and begin ranting. What, exactly, does your exceptionally high gas meter reading have to do with impoverished children in Somalia? That’s exactly the same question your rep will be asking himself as he hangs up on you for being insane.

That’s not to say that you always have to wait. When a company is pretty sure that it’s unimpeachably right, they can achieve a fairly high turnover rate of calls. In fact there is a direct correlation between the length of being on hold and the success of a petition. No company wastes time saying ‘No.’

Speaking of wait time—now is a good time to address a fundamental fact of the USA: the government cannot do anything as well as the private sector. I called the IRS for help instead of engaging in the dubious double entendres that made the news this year. Within seven minutes the first person I talked to answered my question. While this seems like the “you don’t have to wait to pay us” exception, I still wonder. As power rates inexplicably surged in the DC this year with no answers over the phone, I’ve been dying to know why there aren’t marches to PEPCO’s offices. You would think that the government, which is getting hammered collecting money for the wars and bailouts we petitioned Congress for, could learn from the private sector. Yes, we can fleece the public to line our own pockets and not be held accountable.

But the best (read: worst) part is actually talking to someone. The hierarchy of customer assistance was invented because Borgesian was a beautiful adjective that lacked a real world counterpart. Dickens, Gogol, and Balzac have all tried to approximate the lengths at which an organization will try to avoid its responsibility. They failed because they used the imperfect beast of government bureaucracy. Trying to compare bureaucrats to the Byzantine process of fixing your cable service is like putting silly putty on the same pedestal as the Blob. One might muck up your newspaper, but it has no pretentions of devouring your city. Your cable service will send the box to the wrong address, sign you up for the wrong service, and nine times out of ten arrive at your house at least two hours late. Without the correct equipment. And even the repairman needs to get transferred twice before he’s on the line with the right folks.

Worse yet, no matter how rightfully angry you are, in the back of your head you know that person on the other end of the line is not at fault. And the banks, phone companies, utilities, and other toll free customer service monoliths know this. And they use it against you. They want you tofeel like a jerk for yelling or asking for a supervisor. At the end of the day only the cravenly manipulative and the confidently righteous can exit these exchanges without a feeling of profound emptiness.

And you know they recorded it. You know that at the end of the day, someone brings six packs and they gather around to enjoy the most ridiculous recordings at your expense.

Speaking of expense—don’t we actually pay these companies to push this grief on us? Since when in this country did it become standard practice for companies to be evasive, unavailable, and accusatory when their own products don’t work? It’s as if corporate America has turned into that two timing boyfriend we don’t have enough sense to dump. Imagine if you sent the gas company a bill for keeping you on hold when the heat was out due to their error. If they didn’t laugh themselves to death, they’d probably just shut your service off on purpose.

Which brings us to the graveyard of dreams. Dreams where a company paid with your hard earned money might, just might, act in good faith when they’ve made a mistake.

That’s it. Someone go dig up Howard Beale, let’s open up the windows, and sing it from every mountain top. We’re mad as hell and someone else is going to pay. The grassroots are on their way to have another tea party but this time we’re thinking more like Dan Savage than Sam Adams.

(Photos by Tom Hall.)