| Tuesday, March 18, 2008 |
13:48 - Will wonders never cease
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The California DMV has a phone-menu system to beat all phone-menu systems. You can call it at 1-800-777-0133, though I don't recommend it. It starts like this:
"Thank you for calling the Department of Motor Vehicles. For English, press 1. Para espaņol..."
That's where its resemblance to a normal earthly phone menu system ends. From then on, every passing second diverges more and more bizarrely into the realm of the otherworldly.
"Office hours for most DMV offices have changed. You can check the hours for blah blah blah. You can make appointments by calling this toll-free number or this website URL, which I will now read painstakingly and slowly, and then repeat. You are now two minutes into the call."
At this point you're thinking, "Registration... registration... registration...." just waiting for them to give you some menu option that has the word "registration" in it so you can stab a button, but one that doesn't have the word "information" in it which entails a recorded message and no person waiting at the other end. Alas, that's not in the offing, as a man's voice comes on and says:
"For office locations or to make an appointment, press 1.
For driver license or identification cards, press 2.
For vehicle or watercraft, press 3."
I guess option 3 is the one I wanted, but I've been thrown off at this point by "watercraft" and by the assumption that they'll actually use the word "registration" at some point, which is complicated by the next curveball, which is the point at which my brain starts to sweat and try to loosen its collar: A different person, a woman, cuts in here and reads the next few items:
"For information regarding recent vehicle liability insurance changes, press 61.
For information regarding the New Carbuyer's Bill of Rights, press 62."
Then the woman hands the mike back to some other man, who reads the next couple of options:
"For information regarding the online notice of release of liability, press 63.
For information regarding the change of address online, press 64."
Then they hand it off to another woman, while I contemplate cheerful thoughts like driving an unregistered car and/or committing seppuku:
"For information regarding the DMV and Donate Life California organ donor and tissue registry, press 65.
For information regarding the single-state registration system and the Unified Carrier Registration Act, press 66."
At last the original man's voice picks it back up again, the menu-making party evidently over, and offers:
"To repeat this menu, press #. To transfer to an agent, press 0."
Aha! Zero! You press zero. And... you get an immediate "All our agents are busy" message, after which you are sent back to the beginning of the whole three-minute long menu. "For office locations or to make an appointment, press 1." This continues ad nauseam.
At least, it continues until you discover that by just mashing 0 over and over as soon as the menu restarts, you can keep making it check for agent availability without having to wait through all three minutes of offers of recordings about weird paperwork reduction acts and organ donation programs. After four or five tries, I actually got through to someone.
In fact, it was someone who sounded funny and youthful and intelligent. I hope she finds a better job before she turns into Patty and/or Selma. Or before they recruit her to record another few options for the phone menu system.
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Brian Tiemann
