Washington state insults people

It is time for the State of Washington’s government to stop insulting the general population. Automated telephone answering systems have been used for more than a few years. They are set up to queue callers so calls are answered in order received. We don’t need being told “hold the line for next available operator” as if we had never reached an automated phone system previously in our entire lifetime. Having our time wasted listening repeatedly to messages is more than slightly annoying. The general population is not comprised of idiots.

The most “customer friendly” telephone answering systems give a single message, then provide instrumental music that does not loop every few seconds. That allows a person to concentrate on useful work (reading, writing emails, etcetera) until they hear the actual voice of a live person.

People now use the Internet to get information, and do not need to be told the Internet site location of a given government office when they already used that site to get the telephone number of the office. The way the automated telephone systems provide Internet location addresses is just short of saying, “We think you are so dumb as to not know how to find an Internet address.” The vast majority of the population has used the Internet for more than the past 10 years. Even people who are over age 70 use the Internet.

We do not need or appreciate the State of Washington giving the implied insult that people are stupid with respect to understanding how automated phone systems work.

Thomas Fancher

Moses Lake