Sure it is...

How to navigate being ‘important’

By MIKE ARGENTO

One of the biggest lies ever — and we’re including on this list presidential denials about improperly polling members of the electorate and justifications for war that include outright nonsense — is one many of us hear over and over again, with the kind of regularity that numbs us to its bald-facedness.

No, I’m not talking about the little lies that help just about everyone get through the day without getting their lights punched out. And I’m not talking about the little omissions that ensure peace on the domestic front.

(A side note: A friend who’s expecting twins was getting dressed to go out and asked her husband whether her outfit made her look fat or whether it made her look pregnant. Her husband was paralyzed with fear because there was no right answer.)

I’m talking about the phrase that has become so commonplace that it barely registers when you hear it, sort of like the quiet recitation of side-effects in prescription drug ads. (May cause momentary feelings that, perhaps, you’ve wasted your life and diarrhea.)

I’m talking about a sentence that, more than any other uttered by a human or inhuman voice, causes your B.S. detector to red-line.

You know what it is.

“Your call is important to us.�

I’ll pause here while you scream, “If my call were so (expletive deleted) important, why doesn’t someone (expletive deleted) answer it!�

Every time I hear “Your call is important to us,� I think the same thing — no, it’s not. If my call were important, you would have answered it and solved my problem, whatever it is.

But it doesn’t work that way.

What you get after “Your call is important to us� is usually a blizzard of instructions that have nothing to do with why you’re calling.

“Press 1 if you want to hear these instructions in Finnish. Press 2 if you want to hear these instructions in Uralic.�

My favorite: “Press 3 for instructions for the hearing-impaired.�

How do they expect the hearing-impaired to hear it?

And then, once you hear “Your call is important to us,� you can expect to be shuffled off to a version of phone purgatory, where your wait is apparently determined by your sins, which, in this instance, is your inability to figure out your gas bill.

My personal record was being put on hold for nearly an hour by Dell Computer and then speaking to a customer service person who had no idea what was wrong with my wife’s computer for an hour and half. He sent a guy out to my house, who fixed the computer in about 30 seconds.

It used to be that once you got to that point and were placed on hold, you’d get to hear ABBA’s greatest hits or “Horse With No Name� or a Muzak version of “Purple Haze.�

That’s been replaced. Now, while you wait to do penance for not having your 142-digit account number memorized, you get to listen to a disembodied voice tell you all about the services offered by the company you’re calling, services that apparently don’t include answering the phone.

Then, after waiting through all of that, you forget why you called in the first place and give up.

You’ve been there.

Everybody has.

Now, there is help.

A Web site called “Find-A-Human� lists a bunch of companies and shortcuts through the automated phone maze.

Some of them are pretty easy.

To talk to a human being at Commerce Bank, for instance, dial 1-800-YES-2000, and when the computer answers the phone, hit “0�.

It works.

The instructions are the same for Wells Fargo, holder of apparently every mortgage in the free world, but whenever I’ve tried calling the bank, I’ve gotten so lost in its customer service department that I couldn’t find my way out.

And then, there’s Sovereign Bank.

Now, I know this is how things work, but I remember when Sovereign Bank was York Federal and you could pretty much call the place up and get Bob Pullo, the president of the bank, on the phone.

Now, you want to talk to a human being, forget about it.

Even the simplified, “For Dummies� instructions on Find-A-Human are nearly impossible to follow.

Here they are:

“(For) personal banking: 1 for english 1 for personal banking 3 then enter social number then # then passcode then # then hit 0 (between 1 and 3 times).�

Even Find-A-Human has its limits. If that’s difficult, imagine trying to get in touch with AT&T Wireless.

The Web site merely says “no easy escape.�

“No easy escape.�

Words to live by.

And a lot more straightforward than “Your call is important to us.�

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Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com. Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike. Â?