Phone company idiocy May 24, 2006
So, recently I moved into St. Louis west county and the dreaded 636 area code and away from the beloved 314 area code that I have known all my life. As far as I can tell, it is completely random whether you need to dial the area code and/or the preceding 1 when calling a 636 number. There are four possible combinations and I seem to dial at least 2 before getting it correct.
I am already exhausted from hearing that piercing do-dwa-DWEEP sound and that stupid phone company message that you have to dial a 1 (or not dial a 1) or whatever and to “please try your call again”. Now, in this day, if you know what I want to do and how to do it, just DO IT FOR ME. Why do I need to hear a message, hang up, and dial some slightly different number if you know what I intended? Just DO IT FOR ME – I don’t need to be involved or even notified. Just imagine if you were using your favorite web browser and you typed in “sears.com” and it said “Do-dwa-DWEEP. I’m sorry, you must enter the hypertext protocol http:// at the beginning of a URL. Please try your URL again.”
It’s getting to the point where I don’t even call people on the land line anymore because I’m afraid of the message. I just can’t take it. Much easier to pick up the cell phone and unambiguously dial 10 digits (or a shortcut of 7 if I’m in the same area code). No wonder so many people have killed off their land lines in favor of cell phones.
