small weird political note

[redbird]

I've called the governor's office a couple of times this year. The phone tree starts with "if you know your party's extension, please dial it now" and, since I don't, tells me that all staffers are assisting other constituents, please hold. OK, I can do that.

After having me on hold for a couple of minutes, it offers the chance to bypass the queue by leaving a voicemail and having someone call me back.

When I choose that, the next message is "if this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911."

If this is a medical emergency, would you really call the governor's office?

More to the point, if they think people will be calling with medical emergencies, why doesn't that message come up before the caller has been asked to enter an extension and then waited on hold for a couple of minutes?

(So far, they haven't called me back, but IIRC, the first time I said I didn't need a call back, and this time I called at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. By 5:30 the governor had done what my message said I wanted him to do, so while a call back saying something like "Thanks for calling, the governor agrees with you" would be nice, I got what I actually wanted. (I don't care much about the "thanks for contacting me, here's my position on $issue" emails from Sen. Markey, either.))

Comments

[thnidu]

Sounds to me more like they took a semi-generic menubot script without noticing that it was intended for a medical office.

Either that or they figured "We've gotten a couple of medical emergency calls. People should call 911 for that. But we get so few of them, we shouldn't put them ahead of the main points; heck, people calling here might think they've gotten a wrong number for a hospital!" Dummies: can't have it both ways. At least "You have reached Gov. ___'s office. If you are calling about a medical emergency, hang up at once and dial 911. [Now, for the rest of you...]"

But I didn't come here to talk about the governor's voicemail. Come to talk about the draft your comment on cauliflower. Good post, good comment, but you dropped something:

• roasted cauliflower is a very ^ vegetable from the boiled or steamed vegetable
^ different
> (Or something like that, eh?)

If I'd posted this over there, you wouldn't be able to edit the comment.

Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Whom: Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

[redbird]

My thought on the generic menubot was the same as yours, but I've called quite a few elected officials since November, and Baker is the only one that did that.

And thanks for the note about the error on the cauliflower comment, and for using this notification method.

[thnidu]

Maybe only Baker has a staff member who'd make that particular mistake.

"Hey, doc, my boss needs a voicemail answering program."
"Here's the one I use. I'm pretty satisfied with it."
"Gee, thanks!"

And then not check.

Glad to help.

[moem]

Yes, that is weird, but reading about your activism gives me hope.