Q. In the course of a normal day, I find
myself spending infuriating amounts of time on the telephone being told by robot
operators to press this and that button, then being given four different options, followed by another four, and so on. Not only do I resent the feeling of impotence that comes when one is dealing with robots; I also resent being a victim of passive theft as pointless telephone units are clocked up on my bill en route through the maze of options that I don't want. What can one do, Mary?
C.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. Many of our older pensioners have inadvertently cracked this one by simply resisting the first command to press a button on their keypad. They do this out of a mixture of outrage and confusion, but the upshot of their non-compliance is that the system assumes that the caller is not in possession of a touchtone telephone. Since there is a risk that business of some kind may be lost, it connects them to a human operator in virtually no time. Why not follow their lead?
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