I found my new calling… I want to destroy every automated support line in existence.

I can no longer remember which support line it was (maybe HP?) but years ago when I had to call it frequently, I figured out that if you used enough profanity at the otherwise-arduously-long prompts and hold queue, the cursing would short-circuit all that and quickly get you to a real person who could assist you.

So when I called I would robotically intone, “Fuck…shit…bitch…fuck…shit…bitch” until it transferred me to a human. One time my boss walked by and heard me doing this and stopped to watch. She was very chill and asked me after, “What was that about?” I said I found out that profanity caused a quick transfer to an actual rep and otherwise I’d be waiting perhaps hours.

So the rest of my team started doing the “Fuck…shit…bitch” litany when they called the support line. (Pretty sure it was HP, as we had tons of HP servers so were calling often. This was in 2002 or so.)

Who here is moving because of being priced out of area?

I remember when Central Florida and nearly all of Florida used to be super cheap; no longer. I guess nearly nowhere is now, but even 5-6 years ago a decent place in Central Florida was half or less the rent of a place in, for instance, Atlanta or Chicago or Boston.

Those days are I guess gone forever.