Potentially Exciting Secret Knowledge

I may have just discovered an important secret.

There was a weird charge on my phone bill this month, or to be honest, I thought there was. Turns out, I was a little confused, but there was still this $5 charge for something I never asked for that they wouldn't get rid of last time.

So I had to call my phone company, whose name starts with A and ends with T. (Oh, and it's only 3 letters long.) I have had to do this a lot lately. In fact, I have developed a theory that they specialize in long waits on purpose.

A few months ago, they sent me a letter promising to cut almost $30 off my bill, if I would just call and ask. I did. But I was on hold for almost half an hour before they picked up. I think they do things like this so that they can tell someone (I'm not sure who cares) that they're trying to reduce consumers' costs, without having to lose much money because most people can't afford to waste that much time.

So today, knowing I had to deal with them, I called as I was beginning to pay my bills, assuming I would just go about my business while I waited for them to pick up. (This is where the sweetie's obsessive need for a phone head-set comes in handy.)

I can't remember if this happened before, but this time, there was actually a recording that said something like, "We know your time is important. We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls at this time. You may want to call back at another time. We are sorry for the inconvenience." No suggestion to check out the website, just "you probably don't want to do this right now."

This seemed utterly ridiculous to me, especially the part about them being sorry. I knew they were just trying to test me. I wasn't about to hang up. But because I was feeling cheeky, I muttered, "The hell you are."

And do you know what happened? A couple seconds later, the recording said something like, "I see. I will connect you to someone who can help with questions about your bill." I figured this was where the long wait would come in.

But instead, the phone rang a couple times, and someone picked up! She had such a calm voice, that for a moment, I thought it was another recording. But she wasn't. It was a live person! There was no wait.

So, do you think it's really possible that [the Phone Company] has set up their system to recognize sarcasm and/or cuss words and put those people on the fast track? If it is true, aren't you glad to know? Please let me hear about the results of any experiments you conduct to test this theory.