Hi there hello please click the subscribe button and turn on notifications so I can feed my cats and dog. Twitter/Instagram: @TheRyanGeorge Written in collaboration with Scott Roberts!
You forgot the best part of hold music, where it suddenly stops to make you think you got finally connected to a person but then it just starts over again
Better yet, it stops, you clearly hear a call center in the background, and an audible click of a hang up noise... THEN the music continues. So the person let you know: I was supposed to answer your call now but nope you go back on hold.
I always wonder if those musicians brag about their music at parties or whatever. "yeah I'm a musician" "oh have you made anything I'd have heard of?" "well, have you ever called Bank of America?"
"I get them feels". I translate books as a part time job and for the first 13 or so books (that were utter garbage) I used a pseudonym. No, I never brag about that, though it does look good in the CV. 😁
The thing I hate most about being on hold? Who else while on hold puts phone on speakers and go's about doing something else? Only to have the hold music interrupted, you pause what you're doing, and it's only a robot telling you they appreciate your patience. Being on hold is a fact of life. But I'm going to do something else in the meantime so please don't interrupt that and let me focus on the other thing I'm doing until I'M ACTUALLY TALKING TO SOMEONE
I hate when people use apostrophes in the word goes. Seriously though, worse than your example is when you've been on hold for 30 minutes and then suddenly you get hung up on and have to go through the whole process again.
I always do thus. I tell other people about it and they act like it's brilliant or stupid, either way I wonder how they didn't think of it prior to me telling them
I've made the horrible mistake of trying to do dishes while on hold thinking it would be at least an hour, only to have a real person pick up fifteen minutes in and I'm rushing to dry my hands and get to the phone while they can't seem to hear me with my speaker phone on. Ugh!!
I remember my school's announcements had hold music (for whatever reason), however the hold music was actually good. (I know this because the hold music bugged while I was in French class in 7th grade and started playing without prompt)
Clone theory: it's a post-apocalyptic setting where all the Ryan clones have overtaken society, and they're all relearning how to use everything, hence the "First Person To" videos!
My assistant used to work for Britain's largest nursery chain so I had to call their head office to check her reference. The hold music was nursery rhymes, the HR rep came on the line quite suddenly and caught me singing along to Wind the Bobbin up.
The two of them fighting each other by pointing their phones at each other with the hold music is perfect! And that ending was unexpected and hilarious too.
Same... I had to pause the video, and laughed for a solid minute after that line. One of the most apt (and funniest) descriptions I've ever heard in my life. Ryan ought to be a consultant for Hollywood. His ability to pick apart crummy writing, find plot holes, and of course his sense of humor... they ought to be hiring him as a script doctor at the very least.
To be fair, the way the two tracks clashed I was unaffected until the artist started too. I thought it was going to end with the two of them fighting over who got to jump out of the window.
WAY back in the day, some Microsoft tech support channels had a live DJ who'd tell you how many people were waiting to talk to an expert and tell you the name of the next smooth jazz track he was gonna play. He was low-key hilarious, and we'd sometimes call MS tech support and just leave it on speaker until we got through, then hang up.
You know, while they listen to the hold music we can offer them an escape route to voicemail, and if they dont take it, after 45 minutes we'll just force them to anyway, right after we inform them they're finally the next person in the queue.
Not unless I get an option for a simple tone that beeps periodically or simply nothing instead. Most times the hold music just makes me angry. I don't need hold music. You'd think that by now we'd be able to escape audio only calls. Let me call customer support via an app or zoom or skype or something and see a hold message while I'm waiting. DONE. Now I don't need to be further aggravated.
Supervisor guy: "Whooah, it's going to be almost impossible to deal with all these customer complaints." Hold Music guy: "Actually it's going to be super easy... barely an inconvenience."
I work at a job where I hear a lot of hold music. Some very few are bangers. Most are horrible. An astounding number sounds like the hold voice comes towards you on high heels through a tunnel.
At my job I used to have to listen to AT&T teleconference hold music a lot, the song they played was great, it had a good guitar part and the drum finish was always fun to listen to. Now we use Teams so we have to make awkward small talk while waiting for the meeting organizer to get there. I preferred the hold music.
Once, in 1996, I was on hold at a doctor's office and I heard Champagne Supernova for the first time. This was pre-internet. I was transfixed. The nurse came back on the line before it had ended, and I asked her to put me back on hold. 😂
I was stuck on hold yesterday, and this video took that horrifying memory and added a hilarious spin to it. It really is everything both Ryans described.
There are some medical facilities whose hold music is what sounds like they took a generic clap sound and put the worst echo effect on it and these frankly haunting chords underneath that you can barely hear under the crunchy clapping and the whole thing is the opposite of the reassurance I need when having anything to do with medical facilities.
That's default CISCO hold music has the honour of inspiring psychological harakiri for a QUARTER OF A CENTURY. I worked in a council's app support team when they changed their phone systems in 1999 and it has haunted me since. Though it may go back further than that. Urban myth says Vincent Van Gogh was on hold when he'd only phoned to complain about a missed waste bin collection, and one thing led to another.
Many government agencies use that music. My theory: either it's royalty-free, or was written specifically for public agencies and they have to use it. Whenever I hear that clap-clap it brings back every time I called the USPTO, back when I was a patent paralegal.
I work in the tax industry and have to talk to Canada Revenue Agency several times a week all through the year. For (at least) 20 years they've had the same 2 looped songs as hold music. I can hum them from start to finish, not by best flex.
Yup. I *knew* a Ryan George clone or two had *some*thing to do with that torturous hold music my therapist's office forced me to endure the other day. I thought it might be the creepy kid, but it was the weird mustache guy instead. Thanks for the added trauma I'll have to pay them to fix, Ryan.
Worse than being a customer is working at a place that requires you to stay on hold with the customer if you transfer them. On a bad day that’s HOURS of horrible distorted music. 😱
I always remember that the person I'm about to talk to is not the one who did me wrong, and I treat them accordingly. It seems like I should get points for that and be allowed to jump to the front of the queue and skip the hold music.
As someone who had worked in customer service for over a decade, the people who are reasonable and calm, or upset but not at you personally get the best service. We tend to be happy to talk and give additional support or advice when we come across one. The ones who are accusatory, insulting, think that a minimum wage employee in a call centre makes company policy, or starts an email with “Where do I fucking begin?!” (You’d be amazed how many emails to companies start with that sentence) out immediate feeling that we don’t show in our voice is ‘screw you, enjoy the letter of the law you jerk’ and often make fun of them to our colleagues. Long-winded also gets poor results, brevity and being willing to get to the point after the greeting without rambling or providing your entire life story is another top tip. So, cool and willing to discuss the matter like a grown up, and not blaming the customer service rep definitely gets you the best outcome when you talk to or email any company.
Slight side topic... Starting in the late 1940s, up until about 20 years ago, you could call a local phone number to get the time. They didn't have voice synthesizers. They used a machine called an Audiochron (audio+chrono). A lady did a recording session, recording 1 through 59, "o'clock" for 0 minutes, "exactly" for 0 seconds, and words to fill out the message. Each 10 second interval, the Audiochron assembled the fragments into a message giving the current time. "At the tone, the time will be three fifteen and forty seconds ... (beep)." Sound quality was excellent, and it was seamless. It literally sounded like someone carefully reading off the time, every 10 seconds 24/7/365.
NRC. Eastern Standard Time. 6 hours. 32 minutes. And 10 seconds. *beep* NRC. Eastern Standard Time. 6 hours. 32 minutes. And 20 seconds. *beep* I can still hear the voice (although it was a man's voice, in my province, at least). When I was a kid, hearing it change from 11:59 to midnight was a big deal, and you had to time the call well to pull it off, because it would hang up on you after something like 20 seconds.
Now so many things make sense to me. I didn't get why after just a few minutes on the phone with customer service, I felt like chucking my phone out the window. Ryan, you've opened up a huge window of knowledge for me
How is it that Hermitcraft has just done a Hold music thing and now Ryan comes out with this... spooky coincidences. Still funny all the same. There can only be one.... "He who Holds" Legend says He's infinitely on hold with an infinite amount of phones while holding himself completely still while being surrounded by the resonating vibrations of all the infinite songs infinitely playing on loop.
My old work used to have a tech support line we'd call for help with odd PC issues, and they'd play the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms on Loop. Not sure specifically why, but I think it was a gag of some sort. Like, "if you're calling us, you're in Dire Straits" Maybe I'm looking too deep into nothing, but the music wasn't bad, so that was cool
2:07 "When I was a young boy-" My father...Took me into the city...To see a marching band... I haven't heard that song in years and years but the Pavlovian response was instant. Damn, Ryan. Triggering my sub-human dog brain over here...
oh man his face the second time he played it, is so good! He's hurting himself just to hurt the other guy :)
2 месяца назад
My video just started buffering at 0:09 when Ryan touched the screen and I swear my brain just kind of accepted it as part of the video for a good 10 seconds...
"A toy radio in a haunted shipwreck"...that has got to be the most instantaneous transportation to a complete, vivid mental image I've ever experienced.
I've fallen in love with multiple classical songs from hearing them as hold music (I work in healthcare billing and spend a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies, which have dreadful hold times). The weirdest one though was the "Storm" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons (Summer)". Not exactly what would come to mind if I'm thinking of music to try and calm people down while they wait to talk to a rep :|
Speaking of elevators, I thought the premise would be more like this was the music that was rejected as elevator music! Maybe there could be a sequel to this one!
I like to think Ryan actually got put on hold, so he just grabbed his recording set up and some outfits and made this off the cuff. That and he already had the script and was just waiting for the opportunity to record this
My GP had the most ominous nerve-wracking hold music I've ever heard. As if having a health complaint wasn't scary enough, they also had to scare me away from making an appointment even further
My favorite is when it says you can push a button to stop the hold music, but that only applies for what the equivalent of one loop would be before it starts back up
2:30 Okay but that's actually a brilliant idea. Instead of hold music, they put you through to somebody who just spins rambling tales of bullshit until somebody helpful is available lmao
Ok but hear me out, straight music is better than an automated voice saying "your call very important to us, please hold for the next available agent" the hypocrisy kills me when I'm on hold with some some Canadian Healthcare branch and I'm trying to figure out how to stop living in pain before I make the five year anniversary of suffering 😭
@@limiv5272 And somehow, no matter how many times it happens, your heart leaps for the initial split second that you hear an actual person. Then you realize it's just the same damn prerecorded message, and you want to yeet yourself out a window
Those are the worst. I once opted out of the hold music in the hopes I could do some work while I waited, but instead I got 50(!) minutes of beeping occasionally interrupted by the automated voice telling me there were still 5 people before me in line. Needless to say, I did not get any work done that afternoon
He really captured how they distorted the digital music, to the point of it sounding like an old timey calliope, playing on Edison's first record player, through some kind of gauze wrapping....while being slung around on a rope. Although, I always thought it was created by evil govt. psychologists to see if they could make people want to strangle other people using only sound. Ryan's documentary once again clears up forgotten moments in history.
