Book of Daze: Customer Service on Hold Music Day

Customer Service on Hold Music Day honors the soulless ritual of being placed on hold while a corporation decides whether your existence merits acknowledgment. On this day, people hum the limp elevator melodies that have wallpapered their subconscious for years. They drift through hallways murmuring soft jazz, off-brand bossa nova, or that suspiciously chipper xylophone loop that sounds as though it were composed by a middle manager who has not slept since 1998. Participants pretend that their coworkers are assuring them their call is very important, even though everyone knows it is not.

Hold music was “discovered” in 1962, when a car salesman accidentally routed his telephone through a loose wire touching a steel beam. The beam vibrated with the radio station next door, creating the world’s first unrequested musical interlude.

People seized upon the idea immediately, deciding that nothing soothed an irate customer quite like forcing him to listen to an endless medley of soft hits he would never admit to recognizing. Entire industries arose to craft melodies that were intentionally pleasant yet spiritually draining, a genre now known derisively as elevator music. Nothing wounds a composer or performer more deeply, for it implies that his art has achieved the rare distinction of being both ignorable and irritating

Celebrants today honor the tradition by sampling the classics. Some choose corporate smooth jazz, the kind that seeps into your bloodstream until you forget your own name. Others opt for instrumental versions of pop songs that strip away every trace of emotion, leaving only the faint suggestion of rhythm. A few prefer seasonal hold music, such as the wintertime dirge of bells and flutes that repeats every thirty seconds until all sense of time collapses.

This day also recalls the legendary William Edward Williams, a claims adjuster in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, who spent eleven hours and twenty-seven minutes on hold with a cable company without giving up. Scholars regard this as the most extreme example of faith ever expressed toward a customer service representative who may or may not have existed.

Such is the spirit of Customer Service Hold Music Day, a holiday that proves eternity can indeed be experienced one looped melody at a time.

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