Hold Music

Cool! I saw an article in the LA Times about how the City of Seattle is using local bands to produce hold music for the city departments. The City government website even has a web page to tell you what band you are listening to and where to buy the music.

That has to be better than the usual elevator music crap that I have to endure on most holds.

I wish that government departments and companies that specialize in crappy customer service with long hold times would use a more flexible hold music system. I would like to be able to press 1 for pop, 2 for country, 3 for rap, 4 for news and weather, 5 for classical, 6 for rock, 7 for silence, etc. That way when I put my call on speaker phone so I can do other things while waiting for someone to bother to pick up the call, I could listen to what I want.

Speaking of hold music, I had an incident that still cracks me up. Once time back in Santa Barbara I had to call my local medical emergancy clinic to make an appointment. As usual, no one answers. Instead, you are put on hold in a queue. The song that was playing while I was on hold was REM's "Everybody Hurts". The lyrics were perfect...

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on...

I was rolling on the floor laughing when the receiptionist finally answered. I told her what song was playing for the hold music. She didn't get it.

Ah, but the best hold music "incident" was not even real. It was on The Simpsons season 3, episode #8F14, "Homer Alone". Marge left Homer at home in charge baby Maggie. He of course screws it all up and ends up loosing Maggie when she crawls off into town looking for Marge. When Homer realizes that Maggie is gone he calls The Department for Missing Babies. He is put on hold. The hold music is the 1968 The Equals hit "Baby Come Back". I still loose it whenever I see that joke on Simpsons reruns. Brilliant!