Talking on a phone is like riding a dinosaur to work; it seems impossible that you’d take such an awesome ability for granted (and both suffer from flaws because the rest of the world has moved on). Our velocirapting commute would run into all sorts of problems (we call them “cars”), because our chosen method of transport’s antiquated power just hasn’t adapted to modern technology. Just like phone calls still make loud noises and act like they’re essential, despite existing in a world where computers make them obsolete.

The year is 2012. We can bounce signals off orbiting satellites just so you can instantly find the lyrics to the Thundercats theme, and yet you still have to wait on hold when you call the bank. Does that make sense? Every time you’re put on hold, the secretary might as well have asked you to grab a sharpened flint and start scraping some mammoth hide.

Phone lines are still laid down right next to fibre-optic trunk cables and no-one notices how that’s a problem. Or rather they do, but they’d rather get paid. A construction worker isn’t going to point out that they might as well install pitch-soaked straw for smoke-signal relays if they’re going to be installing analogue cable, and they’re paid the absolute least among everyone involved in this backward step. Copper voice-wire is so retro it should have steampunks donning non-shielding goggles with non-magnifying lenses and brass-buckled boots just to call each other over landlines and shout “Can you believe this stuff’s still live?”

Even worse is the application in large companies; call your internet company to sort out a high-speed connection and you’ll spend long enough on hold to download a TV show. That is insane. You can Netflix an entire high-definition episode acted by professionals and scripted by a genius in the same time it takes you to get to a call-centre drone reading out a script not written by anyone even approaching genius status. And that’s assuming they haven’t installed a computerized voice menu, which is actually the very first model of terminator, a T-0 (it can’t kill humans outright but it can steal enough of your life to slow you down). When you have to wait through a three minute presentation of the many basic services your company couldn’t be bothered to hire a human to connect you to, you should be able to send them an invoice for your wasted time.

On the exact same phone you can find the secondary school attended by the special effects director of your favourite movie in under a minute. You can touch, type, speak and tap on the internet, but you have to wait until you’re allowed to say what you might want on the same device. Siri and various Android applications mean you can talk to your own phone faster and more effectively than you can to most companies.

The solution is simplicity itself. Most corporate websites hide their phone number after three pages of “contact us” offers to let you e-mail them and then go away and die/wait for a response. The exact same system could be used for actually letting you contact them; you open their website and can click through the exact same menus their automated phone-waiting-robots will give you, but this time it won’t take your time and both you and the poor employee on the other end will be much happier to be dealing with the right person.

You’re welcome, companies. Just don’t take too long. Because someone is going to do this and as soon as they do they’re getting all of my business.

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