For Irony, Press or Say "One"

Since about five minutes after the advent of the automated phone menu, I have hypothesized that none of the button-mashing these systems put you through has any effect on how your call is routed. The sole purpose of the options menus, I figured, is to keep you occupied so you don't realize how long you've really been in the queue, waiting for The Next Available Representative, who then asks you all the same questions the automated system just asked. It has come to the point that, when I am in a hurry (and who isn't in a hurry to get out of the purgatory of "press 5 for..."?), I'll hit whichever option seems likely to shut the automated system up fastest, since these folks have gotten wise to the trick of bypassing the systems entirely by pressing various combinations of 0 and #.

Shows what I know. I had to call the postal service today, since for what seems like the hundredth time since we moved in, we got our neighbor's credit card bill but not mail that we were expecting, and I've grown weary of waiting 3 weeks for time sensitive mail. The postal service, probably wisely, does not seem keen on giving out the phone numbers to the individual post offices, where my complaint might be most effectively routed, so I was stuck with 1-800-ASK-USPS, which connects to that most vile of automated phone systems, the voice prompt. You know, the ones that make you speak and confirm all of your choices, thus keeping you in the system twice as long as the dialpad menus. These voice recognition systems don't seem to understand, "Get me a human, you automatic piece of crap!" as a valid request. After a couple of runarounds with the USPS menus to find out that none of the options seemed to get me anywhere near a human representative, I started randomly choosing options. Wouldn't you know it, I resort to this in the one automated system on the planet that seems to actually record and display the information you give it. When I finally got routed through to some unsuspecting CSR, she started right in with, "I understand you are calling about a redelivery?" I had just enough presence of mind not to say, "Oh, is that what I chose?" and instead pulled something out of my hindquarters about how "redelivery" seemed to be the closest option to "My mail carrier seems to be delivering my time-sensitive mail to Neptune."