Press 1 for English? The hell you say......

I'm firmly convinced that native English speakers do not exist at ANY call center or customer service hotline anymore. Period. I have this image in my head of a secret council that meets on the regular (probably in some lavish underground bunker somewhere) to decide these sort of worldwide changes. I'm sure someone from Disney or GE is in charge of it. 

In all seriousness, though, I'm not being a racist or even mildly prejudiced about this. I'm talking common sense, folks. I know we have a diverse population here in the good old US of A, but I'm going to go out on a limb (without the benefit of stats because I'm too damn lazy to look that shit up) and say that Indian/Middle Eastern folks are not a large percentage of our population. This is still a country where the majority of folks are white or black and then you get to the smaller percentages.

So why is it that we can't get comparative English speakers on the other end of the phone? We can get translators if you speak another language, so why can't we have more options? I'd love to hear "If y'all need a good old Southern person, press 1" or "Yo, if you need the real shit, press 2". I could totally dig that. 

Between the insurance shit (from the storm), the hospital stay (insurance, hospital folks, etc) and the usual bevy of life's bullshit I have been on the phone A LOT lately with automated systems. I do understand the need for them and the efficiency they bring (from the call center side), but whose dick do you have to suck nowadays to get a live person? You know it's bad when one of the most common internet searches is "how do I get a live person at ___________ customer service?"

Life is so funny; you just can't make this shit up.

We are automating ourselves to death the world over. The scary part is that there will come a day when enough time has passed that people won't even understand what person-to-person conversation is, especially from a customer service standpoint. I'm HUGE on customer service; it's a passion of mine. I take that shit seriously. I'm damn good at it. 

You know it's bad when the antisocial guy who would prefer to handle shit by chat or just procrastinate until it goes away starts having an issue with it. 

At this point I'd just settle for someone who can hit me up with some Ebonics or a little Texas twang or even a little Yankee drawl. I wouldn't have to decipher that shit or have them spell every word out phonetically.