For Inconvenience Press One

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Touch-tone menu systems are expressly designed to obstruct genuine assistance; it's really sort of the point. It isn't hard to believe that there is a scheming, disembodied intellect responsible for your pain. In fact, it's superior to the alternative, which is that another human being designed it, made it like a cage to catch you."

—Tycho, Attack of the Bacon Robots! (Penny Arcade vol. 1)

Thank you for calling the All The Tropes Wiki. To describe or edit a trope, please press 1. To describe or edit a work, please press 2. To describe or edit a creator or person, please press 3. To describe or edit an index, please press 4. To describe yourself, please press 5.(Discontinued because 2/3 of us are misinformed by admins.) To contact an All The Tropes personnel, please press 6. To hear the list again, please press 7.

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To describe a new trope, please press 1. To edit a pre-existing trope, please press 2.

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Please wait.

(Eight minutes, thirty point two seconds of on-hold music, interspersed with "Your call is important to us, please continue to hold...")

Thank you for waiting. Please name your trope.

>For Inconvenience Press One<

Thank you. Please begin trope description at the sound of the tone.

>BEEP<

If you would like to speak to an actual person that is just as annoying as this recording, press The Operators Must Be Crazy.

A character tries calling a number for some important information. Unfortunately, said number has an Interactive Voice Responder (IVR). Hilarity Ensues.

While sometimes this is a string of awkward waits, pauses and irrelevances, sometimes this is inverted by one of the options (usually the third) being exactly what the caller want to find out about, with a ridiculous degree of accuracy. On the other hand, sometimes it's taken to the extreme with a string of "You have chosen [X]. If this is correct, press [Y]," options (with each subsequent one asking you to confirm that your last confirmation was correct).

If a long wait on hold is involved, may overlap with Crowning Music of Awesome.

Examples of For Inconvenience Press One include:

Press 0 for Advertising

  • One commercial in Ally Bank's series of "Even kids know it's wrong to..." commercials parodies this.

For broccoli, say 1. For toys, say 2.

  • Discover cards has an ad campaign depicting a Ruritanian man who calls himself"Peggy" as a customer service employee in some backwoods call center, who gives callers absolutely no help whatsoever.
  • Allstate's "Mayhem" campaign has recently gotten in on the act.


Press 1 for Comics -- Books

  • When Too Much Coffee Man travels to the future, he discovers that trials are now conducted through Interactive Voice Responders

"For a plea of innocence, press one. For a plea of guilty, press two."
>1<
"Innocent plea entered. Processing... Due to a preponderance of evidence, you are found guilty of everything. You're sentenced to life in prison. For appeal, press one."
>1<
"Appealing... Appeal denied."

  • Blue Beetle once needed to reach Max Lord in an emergency but had to suffer through the Superbuddies answering machine service.

"Thank you for calling the Superbuddies hotline! To report a crisis situation, press one now! To report a super-villain sighting, press two now! For a listing of local retail outlets carrying licensed Superbuddies merchandise -- or to order by phone -- press three n--"
(hangs up)


Press 2 for Comics -- Newspaper

  • One Dilbert strip shows Dilbert stuck on one of these lines. By the final panel he's gotten a hammer and is about to smash the receiver.
  • A Sally Forth strip featured her husband recording an answering machine message with a set of "Press X" options, finishing with the statement, approximately: "Press any button you like. The whole point of Voicemail is that we don't want to talk to you." He'd started off by asking Sally if his voice sounded unfriendly enough.
  • Garfield - "If you'd like pepperoni, press one."
  • This happened once in the Finnish newspaper comic Viivi & Wagner. In one strip, Wagner calls the insurance company, only to hear this:

"You have reached voicemail. If you want music, press one. If you're pissed, press two. If you want service, forget it."


Press 3 for Fan Works

  • The Good Omens Fanfic Great are the Myths puts a case of this in Heaven's waiting room when the demon Crowley pays a visit:

"... Konnichiwa. Bonjour."
In the corridors of Heaven, Crowley stared. "Bloody hell," he muttered, "I thought we came up with this."
"Welcome to Heaven," said the voice. "If you are a terrestrial agent, please press one. If you are recently deceased, please press two. If you are an invading demon army, please press three. If you have had your fingers cut off, please bash your head or other appendage against the keypad, and someone will be along to help you momentarily."


Press 4 for Films -- Live-Action

  • Played around with in Demolition Man, where the following line is said by an actual person:

Policeman: Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the San Angeles Emergency Line. If you would like an automated response, please press "1" now.

Justified by the fact that the city has become a utopia where there hasn't been a serious crime in years. Made even better since it's Rob Schneider.
  • Subverted in Small Soldiers: Alan tries to tell the phone operator about the rampaging toys but she can only spout out rehearsed responses. Eventually an exasperated Alan says, "Is there a machine I can talk to? Just patch me over to a machine, please."
    • She also calls him a "ma'am".
  • In the 2007 Transformers film, the soldiers in Qatar are attacked by Scorponok, and one of them takes a cell phone to patch in a call to the Pentagon for air support. The other soldiers are forced to provide covering fire for some time while their comrade has to deal with a man in India who demands a credit card (which he has to fish out of another soldier's back pocket) and tries to sell him on a premium plan before patching him through to the government, ignoring the sounds of gunfire and screaming in the background.
    • Scarily, this was apparently inspired by a true anecdote told to Michael Bay by a soldier. In Grenada, a unit was able to find a telephone line after they lost their radio, but were unable to get through to the Pentagon until one of the soldiers provided his credit card, making this at least somewhat Truth in Television.
    • That's the ending to Heartbreak Ridge
    • Not to mention Dr Strangelove, in which Group Captain Mandrake's attempts to avert nuclear war are almost foiled when he finds that he doesn't have the correct change for a payphone.
  • In the movie Funny Farm, a couple moves into a new house and finds a body in the garden. When they try to contact the sheriff's office (using a phone that was somehow placed on a shelf next to the front door) the operator somehow thinks that they're calling from a payphone, despite the guy's repeated assurances that they're not. It takes the wife actively telling them that there's a corpse in the garden for them to get connected to the sheriff's office.


Remain on the line to hear Jokes

  • Hello, welcome to the Mental Health Hotline.
    • If you are Obsessive Compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
    • If you are Co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
    • If you have Multiple Personalities, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
    • If you are Paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.
    • If you are Delusional, press 7, your call will be transfered to the Mothership.
    • If you are Schizophrenic, listen carefully, and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
    • If you are Depressive, it doesn't matter which button you press. No one will answer anyway.
    • If you are Dyslexic, press 96969696969696.
    • If you have a Nervous Disorder, please fidget with the Pound Button until a representative comes on the line.
    • If you have Amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's and grandmother's maiden names.
    • If you have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, slowly and carefully press 911.
    • If you have Bi-Polar Disorder, please leave a message after the beep. Or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.
    • If you have short-term memory loss, please try your call again later.
    • If you have low self-esteem, please hang up. All our representatives are busy.
      • Alternatively; "If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9."
    • If you are agoraphobic, please stay on the line to make an in-person appointment at our national office in New York City.
Made here

Press 5 for Literature


Press 6 for Live-Action TV

  • Fonejacker: "Hello and welcome to the Flat Line. Is it a...HOUSE or a...FLAT you are interested in?"
  • One particularly funny episode of Married With Children subjected Al Bundy to this trope when he called an auto parts dealer to find an alternator for the Dodge. As just one example of what he had to sit through, after six hours on the phone:

"If your car is a Pacer, press 61. If your car is a Studebaker, press 62. If your car is a Hudson Hornet, press 63..."

About halfway through the call, the automated voice chirpily greets Al by name, as it's apparently asked so many questions about his car that it's now narrowed the potential callers down to just him. And then to make matters worse, when Al finally got through to a live operator, he had to go get his credit card... and Kelly comes in and hangs up the phone while he's away, forcing him to start all over again. Is it any wonder Al dies of bleeding stomach ulcers by the time he's sixty?
    • Since the rest of the episode was a Field of Dreams parody, the episode ends with the line: "If you build it they will come. If you want them to build it for you Press 1 now."
  • One Frasier episode has a frustrated Martin attempt to navigate one of these, made even worse by the fact that the options were voice-activated ("PER-SON-AL."). Frasier attempts to enter a code that he heard will get you straight to an operator. It doesn't succeed, but he does manage to qualify for a small-business loan. If he's remembering his high-school Spanish correctly.
  • In Angel, the Wolfram and Hart intercom seems to frequently misdirect people. Given that the options on their tree range from "I need legal representation" to "I'd like to sacrifice my first-born son to a demon," this has caused some uncomfortable moments.

"You have reached ritual sacrifice. For goats, press one, or say 'goats.'"
"To sacrifice a loved one or pet, press the pound button."

  • One episode of The Nanny has Fran calling the NYPD to try to report a lost child. The first menu she gets says, "To report a murder, press 1. For mugging, press 2. For bomb threats below 34th Street, press 3. 34th Street to 72nd, press 4."
  • On an episode of Seinfeld, George calls a number thinking it's the Mr. Moviefone directory, but really it's just Kramer imitating the voice. After George pushes some buttons to select a movie, Kramer realizes that he has no idea what it is and just replies (in Moviefone voice), "Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see!" At the end of the episode, the Moviefone guy arrives to take revenge for the stolen business.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The story The Invasion has the Second Doctor have to do with an automated receptionist and not enjoy it. Which Zoe later drops a Logic Bomb on.
    • Happens again in "Planet of the Dead". The Doctor calls Unit for assistance and get stuck in this. One of the people trapped in the bus tells the doctor that he can get to a live person by holding 2 when he calls.
  • Poor Brenda comes across a particularly absurd (and hilarious) example of this in Le Coeur a Ses Raisons.
  • Robin Williams, in his HBO special Weapons of Self Destruction, has a whole bit devoted to this, additionally mocking imperfect speech-recognition systems:

"List city and state please." Washington, DC.
"What would you like?" Constitution Hall.
"Did you say, 'Kennedy Center'?" Nooo.... Constitution Hall.
"Did you say, 'Congressional Balls'?" No...!
...And it's such, you become like the Miracle Worker: (heavily enunciated) Constitutiooon Haaaaaaalllll...
"Did you say, 'Cocksucker'?" NO I DIDN'T SAY COCKSUCKER!
"Would you like to talk to a person?" Fuck yes!
"If you'd like to talk to a person, press 1." >1<
"If you'd like to talk to someone in English, press 2." >2<
(Mexican accent) "Are you sure you don't want to talk to someone in Spanish? Press 3." >3<
"Press 4 if you'd like to move to the next menu." >4<
"Press 5 if you're getting somewhat irritated." >5<
"Press 6 if you're my bitch." >6<
"Press 7. You know you want to." >7<
"Press 8, daddy, do it!" >8<
"Press 9!" >9<
"What are the chances of talking to a real person? ZERO! Press it!"
>BEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP<
(Indian accent) "Hullo! Did you want to talk to a real person?"

For sales inquiries, press 1. For customer service, press 2. For two hours of irritating music, press 3. For more options, press 4. For fewer options, press 5. To speak to one of our operatives, emigrate to Mumbai.


Press 7 for Music

  • Dr. Online by Zeromancer has one for suicide center, ending "If you do not wish to die, please hang up now."
  • The song "LAMC" by Tool, the entire song being a recording of one man's desperate struggle against the automated telephone response system of the Los Angeles Municipal Court. The song only increases in bizarreness as the song goes on; the selections get increasingly outlandish and the man's obvious frustration mounts (we never hear him talk, but the sounds of the button presses tell us all he need to know).
  • Gotye dedicated an entire song to phone-answering robots called "Thanks for Your Time."
  • From the Capitol Steps' album Four More Years in the Bush Leagues:

"Hello. You have reached the cell phone of Saddam Hussein. I'm not here right now, but your call is very important to me. If you wish to declare a fatwa, press 1 now. If you are a former body-double looking for work, press 7-11. If you are an imperialist infidel, press 666! All other calls, please stay on the line."

  • "A Skit About Robots" from MC Frontalot's Secrets from the Future album ends with Frontalot threatening to stab the phone computer in the EPROM, prompting it to apologize for its misbehavior.
  • The track introductions from the PDQ Bach album Two Pianos Are Better Than One:

If you wish to hear this work as the composer wrote it, press 1.
 If you wish to hear it sung by Spanish monks who live in an isolated monastery called Our Lady of How to Package and Market Recordings, press 2.
If you wish to hear it performed by members of the Bolshoi Capitalist Ensemble, press 3.
If you wish to hear it played by caffeine addicts who bring it a good two minutes under the next longest performance, press 4.

  • The T-Bagging skit on Ludacris' album Chicken-n-Beer is all about this:

If you woke up with a hangover and a pair of hairy balls on your forehead, press 7.
BEEP
You've just pressed 7. You've been victimized and introduced to a moral crime called teabagging. We suggest you probably hang up the phone, beat the ass of any white guys you hung out with last night, and find and destroy all photos before they appear on the Internet.

Press 8 for Print Media

  • GAMES Magazine once had an indirect dialing maze puzzle where you had to follow the instructions exactly or get disconnected. The goal, 0, brings the news that the operator has just left.


Press 9 for Tabletop Games

User Desmond-O-NTY is not available. This call has been forwarded to an automated voice system. (...) To confess to treason, please press 1. To accuse the citizen you are calling of treason, please press 2. (...) To answer the survey on the new Bouncy Bubble Beverage, please press 4. For global thermonuclear war, please press 5. If you know the number of the extension you are trying to reach, press octothorpe and star simultaneously, then 3 several times quickly and follow the voice instructions. For more options. For more options, please press eleventeen. Eleventeen. For more oprionts. Options. General protection fault. This device will self destruct in ten seconds...

Press "Start" for Video Games

  • A puzzle in Zork: Grand Inquisitor involves figuring out the automated service on the "Hades Shuttle Courtesy Phone" to summon Charon's boat, which features instructions like "To press 3, please press 7". One can figure out how to navigate it normally (which takes a while), or use the Simplify Instructions spell "Kendall".

"Press the * Key for 'What is all this? I just want to call the damn shuttle. Is that so much to ask?'"

There's even a key you can press to make the entire instruction list be recited backwards. And it works. Subtitles and all. (Talk about a Crowning Moment of What the Hell... literally.)
  • A puzzle in Syberia involves using a canal mechanism to allow a boat to tow the spring-loaded train to the winding mechanism. Unfortunately, it requires a numeric password and the only apparent help is a phone that leads to one of these...that serves as no help whatsoever. Apparently the only way to find the code is to effectively try all combinations until the right one appears (the code is only 2 digits so it doesn't take TOO long. Not to mention it turns out to be 42).
  • Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
    • In Episode One, attempting to call Bubs using Homestar's phone results in a phone tree. Strong Bad quickly hangs up because "You can't prank a phone tree. Besides, the last time I navigated Bubs' Tele Stand, I wound up with a crate full of rhino horns... and not even the endangered kind!"
    • The fifth episode features a couple of very-low-tech computer programmers pretending to be an automated phone service. Their options for "one", "two", and "three" aren't helpful, so you have to say "four" in order to get anywhere, even though they didn't even have an option four.

"SAY ONE, TWO OR THREE!"


Press "Pause" for Web Animation

Church: THERE IS NO 11 YOU FUCKING WHORE!!


Press 11 for Web Comics


Press * for Web Original


Press # for Western Animation

  • The Simpsons
    • In the episode "Bart of Darkness", a Rear Window parody, Bart thinks Ned Flanders killed his wife and sees Ned arrive while Lisa is investigating. Bart tries calling the police...

Voice: Hello, and welcome to the Springfield Police Department Resc-u-Fone?. If you know the name of the felony being committed, press 1. To choose from a list of felonies, press 2. If you are being murdered or calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line.
(Bart growls and punches some numbers at random)
Voice: You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press 1.
(Bart slams the phone)

    • In "King-Size Homer", when Homer attempts to call the nuclear plant to warn them of an impending disaster (listen here):

Voice: The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now."

    • And in "Home Sweet Home-Diddly-Dum-Doodly," Homer and Marge try to call their kids, only to get an automated message stating that the Flanders' phone number can't be reached and ends with, "You negligent monster!"
    • Another gag is that whenever a family member is put on hold, the music that plays relates to whatever problem they have, causing them to break down in tears.
  • Taz-Mania: Taz tries calling a hotline for help how to catch the Kiwi bird and ends up navigating an endless process in which every dead end leads to him getting a mallet to the head.
  • South Park: Kenny dying (as usual) and being embalmed with Worcester sauce in a freak accident creates a Zombie Apocalypse. When the boys call the helpline on the sauce bottle, the third option is "If your town is being overrun by zombies..."
  • Happened on SpongeBob SquarePants, where Spongebob and Squidward thought the town was being overrun by robots. Spongebob tries to call the Navy for help, triggering the following dialogue:

Voice Message: Hello! You have reached the Navy's automated voice messaging system.
SpongeBob: Squidward, the robots have taken over the navy!
Squidward: Not the NAVY!!!

  • Used for good (surprisingly) in this political cartoon [1]
  • House of Mouse
    • One episode has Mickey, Donald Duck, and Goofy attempting to deal with an automated greeting service in front of the phone company. Mickey follows the instructions given to him to the letter but gets nowhere. Donald tries to mess with the system and it decides that Donald wants to pay his bill, followed by a mechanized arm trying to take Donald's beak. When they take it off the wall and try to destroy it, it says "If you really want to smash me, stomp harder!"
    • In the short "computer.don", Donald tries to buy and install a computer after Daisy accuses him of being old-fashioned and calls him a dweeb. He calls the computer company and receives this message:

Automated answering service: To order a computer, press 1. If you can't press 1 because you're still using one of those old rotary phones... you're a dweeb.

  • In the Rugrats episode "Naked Tommy", Didi tried to call Lipschitz's hotline for advice on how to deal with Tommy running around nude only to have her wait until "press 9" which only gave her a recorded message what has already been written on his books and charged Didi for every minute she waited on his hotline.
  • In an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Carl loses both of his arms, and attempts to call the hospital using only his tongue. The automated message refers him to a ridiculously long number.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar, "An Elephant Never Forgets". A man is confronted by Burt the elephant and calls Animal Control:

Voice: You have reached the Animal Control Hotline. If you know the name of the animal trying to eat you, please say it now.
Man: Elephant! El-e-phant! Elephant!!
Voice: You said Everglades pygmy sunfish. First, step out of the bayou and onto dry land.

And later, when the penguins arrive...

Man: Now it's penguins?
Voice: You said Peruvian milk snake.

  • On American Dad, Roger and Steve call a company to complain about a shoddy novelty product they bought. They are left on hold for what is implied to be days when they finally reach voice mail. But when Steve asks for billing, the machine reroutes them to Barbara Billingsley (of June Cleaver and Jive-talking Lady fame).


Throw the phone against a wall for Real Life

  • Verizon customer support. Even if you get to talk to an actual person, they'll just redirect your call back to the menu, which competes with House of Leaves in labyrinthine magnitude.
  • A medical center on Staten Island has a particularly bad example. They ask you to press one to speak English, so you do - and then they switch you to the Spanish menu!
  • metroPCS has one better. The computer voice sarcastically confirms every selection you make. Never you mind the fact that it always makes you pay your balance, even if it is not due.
  • UPS is almost like a Sierra game. If you call their customer service and state that you do, in fact, have a tracking number, it's into the labyrinth with you!
  • A former menu item in the National Discount Brokers phone service:

"If you would like to hear a duck quack, press 7."

  • Thankfully, an aversion exists in these kinds of services which recognize voice commands in addition to/in lieu of pressing whatever number key on the phone. In this case, the quickest way to speak to a live operator is to just say "Operator!" at every recording until an operator picks up.
    • Those don't always work, such as when a certain college's automated system gets "Library" mixed up with the office of Jerry Something (forgot his last name, but the whole thing was frustrating as hell).
    • Some systems require "Agent" instead of "Operator". There is the story heard of even one example where it uses voice recognition but they would not let you to speak to the operator until you called the automated system an idiot, and then they asked "Did you just call me an idiot?" and you replied "yes" and they tried to connect you to an operator, but none were available so instead the call just disconnected.
    • You can usually also skip the menus that don't recognize voice by just hammering '0' over and over until the system gives up.
    • It depends on the company. http://www.gethuman.com/
    • Unfortunately, many operators now have a script and flowchart that they have to stick to, making them just as frustrating to deal with as an IVR.
    • I find voice recognition systems even worse than DTMF recognition systems.
  • Xcel Energy only has phone tree options that lead to inputting your account number, even though you need to go through this tree to set up an account. Eventually, you must yell at it until it produces an operator. This operator will entirely fill out your new account, then is required to transfer you back to a different phone tree to set up the last couple things. This phone tree wants you to tell it your last name. Yes. I don't know anyone whose name it could recognize.
  • Subverted by reality in that most (if not all) menu systems have a "shortcut" to an operator—typically, pressing 0 (sometimes * or #) several times will achieve this. Also—holding after the menu is usually a good thing to try. Many companies also leave the delay to accommodate those few people who don't use touch-tone phones.
  • British bank First Direct (part of HSBC) market themselves as an aversion of this—people calling through to their main telephone banking line are put through to the first available operator immediately, with no IVR in between (HSBC themselves use an IVR, however.)
  • Bank of America's phone network gives a nod to Red vs. Blue and asks those who would like to discuss their mortgages to press eleven.
  • Odeon, a cinema chain in the UK, used to have an atrocious one of these for bookings in the 90s and early 00s. It was all voice activated, and not very good. It was particularly bad at picking up place names, so often somewhere like "Hemel Hempstead" would come out as "Huntingdon" or "Hatfield" (both places, just nowhere near each other) or the dreaded "I'm Sorry, I did not understand your request." Fortunately online bookings pretty much killed the service.
  • The UK's somewhat ironically-named Department of Work and Pensions has a particularly annoying subversion set up if you want to claim unemployment insurance; once you've got through the surprisingly brief automated bit and spent upwards of a quarter of an hour listening to the same ninety-second segment from one of Vivaldi's Four Seasons rendered with an early 90s MIDI synthesiser and played in an endless loop, you then have to answer a long series of questions and be interrogated about your eligibility to receive Jobseeker's Allowance. The depressing part of this is that these questions are all read out by a human operator, who is forbidden from doing anything to speed the process up by skipping over some of the more unlikely items (income from property you're renting out, for example) you have to confirm that you do not in fact have, or otherwise make the process more pleasant than talking to a computer. One suspects that the DWP uses live operators because they are paid less than it would cost to operate a machine to replace them.
  • All five big Canadian ISPs and phone service providers (Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, and Telus) are notorious about this. There are people in Cogeco's phone system whose entire job appears to be to transfer you to someone else, and you can't get anywhere in the Bell system if your address isn't in their system, and sometimes up to half a town isn't in their system. This is a big contributor to all three companies' reputations failing.
    • It is sometimes possible to subvert the system entirely by ringing the bank/insurance company's/utilities company's sales number. The same company that will make you go through the numbers and still have to wait ten minutes to get customer service will unaccountably have its dedicated sales team answer the phone immediately using a real person. you can then have an immediate conversation as follows:

Them: TDCIHSRBCMO Bank, how can I help you/can you answer a few security questions?
You: Good. You can obviously access my details or you wouldn't have been able to confirm my identity.
Them: Can I interest you in our—
You: No. To save me hanging around on your other line, can you tell me my current balance?

Thank You. Your trope has been made. To return to the Index Page, press 1. To make a call to Candle Jack, press tw (here a new voice takes over) To make another action, press 3. To read a passage from House of Leaves, press 666.

>1<

Thanks for calling All The Tropes. Be sure to call again soon to ruin someone else's life. Good bye.

>RPT<

Number nine, number nine, number nine...

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