Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 28, 2020

Goat appreciates the luxury of being cruel vicariously.

Do you get to pick the song? If so, try “MacArthur Park”; that can make anyone beg for mercy.

FINALLY, Rat did a little something for the betterment of society!

Hopefully Rat also put the CEO in the endless Robo-Operator loop!

After the cable company that I won’t name, but it rhymes with “bombast” lied, boosted my rates, and lied again for the umty-millionth time, I hunted around and found a local company that provides “wifi-ish” service, so no cables, just an antenna on our house. Their price has been fixed, to the penny, for several years. When I call them (perhaps as often as once or twice per year) for tech support, I am ALWAYS greeted by an actual person. And about 25% of the time, that person is the one I actually need to talk to. And they play pleasant holding music IF I’m waiting… for a minute or two. Without commercial interruptions. It is true that their speed is lower than the cable company’s speed. But it is fast enough for the two of us to stream something at the same time, though not for interactive shooter games (which neither of us cares for). But that nice fixed price is about 50% of the the cable company’s actual cost.

When I contacted them, they asked why I’d decided to call. I told them that I was sick unto death of the behavior of the cable company. Instant response: “Oh, sure. They’re our BEST sales group.”

In the words of Rage Against The Machine, " #%€# It!!! Cut the cord !!!

Seems fair..lol

Voice prompt systems should crawl back through the hellhole they came out of, and seal it shut behind them.

24 hours on hold. Expensive call. Doubt it was an 800 number.

Everyone’s fantasy…

Wish I could do that. “IVR” and “customer care” are two of the best smokescreens for shoddy service and dodging customers!

Do something similar to the C.E.O. who is currently running the Walt Disney francise. He’s nothing but another money monger. Creating a streaming service that you have to now pay to see any type of Disney and Pixar Movie. Also Marvel, National Geographic and whatever else that money hungry mongerer currently owns. He even has the control to refuse to show certain Disney movies in theaters that you’ll only be able to see it by subscribing to his streaming service. I mean it’s kind of understandable now because of the pandemic, but I’m still just trying to prove a point. So do something similar, or worse that guy who owns the Disney franchise, Rat. I will forever love you if you do ;)

BLESS YOU, Rat!!!

Just let me talk to a human being ! … Croc Power !

Nutley Brass, Ramones Songbook. Elevator music covers of Ramones songs. You can thank me later. https://youtu.be/MH0kHju79Ek

Play the “Manah manah do do do do do” song! The muppets….once you hear it it never leaves your head…..

He should play Debbie Boone singing “You Light Up My Life” for 24 hours

I hate to call, but I couldn’t get online to my credit card company. 2 hours to get a human. That is why I’m glad for the landline, I don’t know if my batteries on the cellphone would have made it thru. They did solve the problem quickly though.

Takes our strategy to oust Presidente Noriega from that Panamanian church to a whole new level.

Don’t we ALL want to do this?

It seems that most hold music is designed to get a person to hang up.

True story: When we were living in Va, we has a mother racoon give birth on the smoke shelf of our fireplace. Called Animal Control, and they told us to get a radio, tune it to a heavy metal station, turn up the volume, and put in the fireplace. Then put some cushions around the fireplace opening so it will muffle the sound.

The racoons were gone within 24hours. The neighbor across the street saw the mother racoon carry her babies out of the chimney.

This should be a lession to all of us.

P.S. We put a chimney cap on the chimney the next day.

I don’t think anybody is gonna get to sleep now.

With my recent misery marathon on hold, it wasn’t which songs they played but the sound quality. It was like a badly tuned radio station being transmitted down a can-and-string arrangement. Hissing static and faint.

come to think of it, wasn’t that the premise of MST3K?

GO RAT!!!!!

Rat the true GOAT of this strip

Not a problem for me; I can’t get through to a human at all. I need to have my robot call their robot. But, yeah, I HATE hold “music”, and would happily join Rat in his service to humanity.

My devices seem to be breaking in tandem again. I installed the PBS app (not Pearls Before Swine) on my Samsung smart TV, but I had to change my password. My Samsung smart phone demanded that I log into it again. I had to verify through text, but it wouldn’t accept the verification even after multiple attempts. I went to my landline to call for support, and my landline was dead. I knew it worked a week ago, because I tested it when my phone company internet went out then. (Side note, the internet was going out again.) So then I had to call support on my smart phone, and try to do things on it while talking on it. The good news is that I went through to help quickly. The bad news is that the phone the help was using was very noisy and chirpy. Must be sheltering in place with their own phone. In the middle of the procedure, the call cut out. So then I had to schedule a phone company representative to come out and restore my landline service. He came out the next day, but had to summon someone out the day after that to fix the problem from the pole box. Finally the day after that I prepared to call Samsung again, but I decided one more time to have them send me a verification by voice. When I looked up how to do that, I finally found a several-weeks-old issue that fixed the original bug. You were supposed to remove the “+1” international dialing code from your own phone number that automatically comes up to request where to send the verification text, even though the text was received just fine without this. This has been happening for weeks and Samsung never fixed it?! Aaaghh!!!!

Speaking as a music lover and amateur musician, as well as a former professional sound engineer, it is my considered opinion that almost all hold “music” – including not only both the selection of notes and the shortness of the loop, but also and especially the sound quality, is carefully designed to make you hang up and go away.

I have been known to answer the rep’s eventual “How are you today?” with “I was fine, but after 45 minutes of your vile hold noise, I’m in a really foul mood.”

One time I gave my dad a ride to an art supply store so he could go shopping. After a while I noticed that the music playing over the loudspeakers was odd. It had a slower section, then raised to a crescendo, and then back to the slow section. There was no beginning and no end. The store was accidentally playing hold music over the speakers, unless they did it on purpose and they hate us.

I know of a drive-in theater that played instrumental classic Hollywood music over the sound system so you could properly setup your radio before the movie. One time though they played a version of the outdated song “Wives and Lovers” sung by a woman. (Hey! Little girl. Comb your hair, fix your makeup. Soon he will open the door. Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger. You needn’t try anymore…) And they just played that song over and over again, just to annoy us. Worse, it kept leaking through the audio of the movie after it started. This was the showing of Shanghai Noon where they swapped reels two and three. They just didn’t care.

But, you said that my call was important and then directed me to your web site to look after the problem myself.

The music should be interspersed every 10-15 seconds with a recorded message saying “We are experiencing unusually high call volumes. We will be with you shortly. We appreciate your patience.” Over and Over and OVER again!

On the prison planet Justicia, they play “Toxic” over and over.

Some of the Hold Music is so loud and when someone finally answers you can’t hear them…. like commercials…..

NO WAIT!! Ahh, it’s too late. Now we have three channels of 24-hour hold music for easy listening. Siiiigh.

The late Whitney Houston: All my songs sound just the same; every one sounds like the last one.

Cruel, and all-too-usual, punishment.

Or, from the Mikado: “My object all sublime, I will achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime! — And make each prisoner pent, unwillingly represent, a source of innocent merriment, of innocent merriment.”

Loosen one of the speaker wires. It’s gotta be intermittent and crackly-buzzy.

This is my all time favorite Perls Before Swine comic!!! Made me laugh out loud.

Oh how about the “silence” about retirement of 3G networks?

I did this after the “church” next door had a band that only knew one song, the bass player only knew 4 notes, and they “practiced” until after 3AM several nights running. They were having a tent meeting and had set up the tent no more than 20 ft from our house. I asked them to stop. They said our house was possessed. The police refused to do anything because they were supposedly a church. So, after a meeting with the rest of the neighborhood, we hung very large speakers out the kitchen window facing them and while I was home, I blasted them with Mozart and when I left for school, my husband would play heavy metal. Our kids stayed at my mother’s house. It took two weeks, but they finally moved. The whole neighborhood rejoiced.

When I’m on hold, the fact that my call is very important to them consoles me.

There should be an spinoff of this strip called “Better Call Rat”

At the 1964 World’s Fair in NYC they had the “It’s a Small World” ride. I was a teenager but one trip around was enough for me. The ride was cool but OH THAT SONG!!!!

Takes me back to the 1970s, when the arms race on campus was manifest in dormitories by ever-escalated speaker size.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Go, Rat, go! I think you may need even more amplifiers!

Hopefully the music was interrupted every 45 seconds by a recording that makes you think someone finally answered, but was instead just reminding you how important your call is to them.

I appreciate rat too for that, goat!