A Massachusetts doctor who pleaded with CVS to change its on-hold jingle is getting his wish, per the AP. The Boston Globe reports a spokeswoman for the pharmacy chain said Friday the company is in the process of updating its voice-response phone system, including the on-hold music that Dr. Steven Schlozman so hated. The child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital penned a tongue-in-cheek letter to WBUR-FM last year, with the Globe noting he was on the “brink of a possible breakdown,” claiming the music haunted him “day and night.” “Please. Do the right thing,” he wrote. “I hear it in my sleep. I hear it when I go running. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night humming that melody. … It’s not healthy. I know. I’m a doctor.”
Schlozman estimates he’s heard the song at least three times a day for years on end. The letter sparked a nationwide debate, with some people praising the music and others sharing Schlozman’s sentiments. Even the Wall Street Journal got into the action last year, calling the tune—said to have been penned by a now-deceased Harvard-educated musician named James Romeo—”divisive.”
I miss – really, really miss – the old days of phones with extension buttons and a hold button along the bottom. When you were on hold, you’d hear a faint tick…tick…tick as the hold light blinked. Not intrusive, not distracting, but enough to let you know you were still connected.
As for music-on-hold, I hate it all. Used to be, you could put your end on speaker phone and go about your business until someone picked up. But now you’re broadcasting whatever crappy music they’re playing to anybody withing earshot. It’s really rude in offices with coworkers nearby but some assholes do it anyway. The same ones who use speaker phone to dial so everybody cringes at the dial tone and number beeps.
</peeve>
Fookin depressin’
“Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Geo. Orwell
I can give you a number to a Federal pay office for contractors that the canned music will make your mind melt. I don’t care, fucking pay me.
Replace it with rap. The doctor will beg you to put the old music back.
When we Socialists take over FM radio and streaming music services, this is ALL you’ll be allowed to listen to. Get used to it, slaves.
Justice, when socialists take over there won’t be electricity dummy!
Dummy never heard of sending RX directly via computer?
Heard worse.
You’d think they could at least play music that would keep you awake instead of putting you to sleep.
There is a reason it’s called Muzak, it’s music for hacks and usually pretty crappy at that. They could solve the unemployment problem for women by bringing back real live telephone operators (English speaking only and literate as well), who would connect you within a minute to whoever you’re calling, wouldn’t that be nice.
Radioationman will broadcast some Led Zeppelin
on his CB radio to use guys,till my batteries
run out.