I am now of that age to register for Social Security; a couple of months ago, I did so to start soon. I called at 3pm today to talk to a customer service representative to see if everything was all set. Upon being transferred from automated system (rather annoying that they have decided that you HAVE to listen to information that THEY deem necessary but has nothing to do with why I was calling), I heard about 30 seconds bit of “on-hold” music and then got this in my ear:
…your wait time is approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes…”
then just a WEE bit more muzak and then this:
“…Some will be with you shortly…”
I bit my tongue at that and then slowly shook my head. I WROTE one of the first programmable voice system when at Wang Labs (yep, “converted” their VS Supermini OS to be more “real time” for this new functionality as well as programming the hardware that actually interfaced with the phone system and generated the voice portion. How hard could it have been to do a quick review of the stated time and then pick up a modified phrase “Someone will be with in in [xxx] minutes and you are [yyy[] in line.” instead of that completely off base “shortly”?
Or does the Social Security Administration move so slowly that an hour really is a short amount of time?
