5ywjdPumpkinPrincess
23910
659
6
Dec 19, 2025 1:47 PM
5ywjdPumpkinPrincess
23910
659
6
dynamojoe
Nope, and when they tell you "please listen to all the options as our menu has recently changed", no it hasn't. They really mean "Don't immediately press 0 eighty times for an operator you impatient crack monkey.".
Imalwaysready
The product gets worse more people call in, so the average is always climbing and they are always exceeding it with every new iteration.
d4m4s74
Of course we can. We're open 9 to 5, during that time the wait time is 2 hours. From 5 to 9 it's 0, which means the average is a nice 40 minutes.
GasBandit
You can, if the trend is always increasing, you are always experiencing more than the average.
DesperateDunn365
You can if your service keeps getting worse.
BestofUwU
I can corporate translate that for you "We are experiencing a higher number of calls than we are willing to pay people to answer in a timely manner"
chiefrunswithscissors
You can if you include the time when you are closed
TripleDane
that calcautle on the ful l24 hours of the day 7 days a week.
So the 8 hours in the 5 days .they are all in fact above the average :D
Colopty
If they get exactly 100 calls per day except one day they had only 1 call, then the average would be 99.999....... and practically every day would be an above average amount of calls. It'd be an incredible fragile balance but technically averages can work like that.
Or alternatively their daily calls always trends upwards. That one would even have a bit more leeway to go down every now and then without dropping below the average. Wouldn't last forever but might be sustainable for a few years.
Snooj
Well, try calling them every hour instead of in the middle of the day when it’s convenient for you. Because that’s when it’s convenient for everyone.
innagaddavidababy
Actually, a monotonically increasing sequence is always above its mean. Averages sure can work that way.
zzz777
They could just answer fewer calls, that's also how averagers work,
redtruck
"Normal"....they say normal, not average.
AzraelEternity
I would accept if they said "higher than anticipated" rather than average.
LicensedAdHominem
But that wouldn't shift the blame from the management onto customers.
brianterrel
In Washington State, if you have a problem with the department of licensing website you are given a number to call. If the number of people waiting for an operator goes over 100, FOR THE WHOLE STATE, it says they're experiencing a high call volume and hangs up on you. I never managed to get in the queue. Nobody I've talked to has. Nobody on the many reddit threads has. It is a completely useless service. Fortunately the local DOL offices have a completely different system and they can fix things
DianNaoChong
It is if you measure from the start of time
veedubfreak
CenturyLink has been in lockdown since 2020. I hate their IVR so much
JadeNB1729
I don't want to stand up for these companies, which are clearly just making excuses, but averages can behave differently from what people expect. (We expect them to be more like medians.) If you get 10 calls on 364 days of the year, and 9 calls on one day of the year, then the average number of calls per day is just a hair under 10, and so you get more than the average number of calls on 364 days of the year.
Snooj
Most people call when it is convenient for them to call. That's when and why you hit the "above average". If the call center is open 24/7 most people are not calling at 3am but that hour counts to the average just as much as the lunchtime hour.
SomeDetroitGuy
Except now they send you to an AI bot that can't actually give you any information, can't actually solve your problem, and won't transfer you to a human because they fired all the humans in favor of the AI bots.
PineappleLoopsBroether
For medical calls, it’s fucking infuriating that I have to give my number, birthday, social, and so on but then have to give all that same exact info to the fucker who picks up the phone.
YellowSparrow
That's exactly how averages work. If you open the business for 12 hours per day and have 1000 calls per hour, the daily average is 500 per hour. Lies, damn lies, and statistics, as goes the saying. They're so comfortable with the "logic" that they've come to believe it themselves.
Grinch01
When the average you expect is Zero than it can be
RetiredLaserMan
"our menu items may have changed" - the fuck they did!
DeatyPoo
For having set up several VoIP systems, 90% of customers just use that as the default audio for call parking!
MoonMoon89
Perhaps they count the all time they are closed?
FrankGrenadine
I agree that they are bullshitting us but there is a real mathematical phenomena related to this
https://www.math.ucla.edu/~mason/papers/frym-WTP-published.pdf
Xbgt1
This is how call centers work: Low call volume send people home, high call volume: good, we are paid by the minute.
PileOfWalthers
Or, when I laughed in their faces and walked off: we have low call volume, but you need to wait in the parking lot without pay and you can’t go anywhere.
Euchre
That's pretty much illegal. If you send someone home after scheduling them in for a shift, you can't make them stay on premises, and the provided employee parking counts, even if they claim it doesn't. Also, in many or even most states, there's a minimum pay hours for showing up on a scheduled day, if they don't call off your shift before arrival or even a reasonable time in advance of your shift. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/22-flsa-hours-worked
PileOfWalthers
Oh I knew that had to be illegal as fuck. They were hoping nobody did. It was a call center for one of these cellphone providers that got bought out and merged and disappeared since.
Euchre
So you won't say it, but my bet is Sprint. Sounds like the shit they'd pull. They were so proud of their low wait times when people called customer support, and I can guess that was one way they got it. When the Sprint rep told me about that, I said "Wouldn't it be better to reduce the amount of times people even have to call support?" He didn't like that, nor have a great answer for that.
Euchre
You'll see in that federal documentation that staying on premises is considered 'time worked' if they want you to wait until your service is needed at any given time.
swedeonamoose
Nothing like spending your day in a phone line -.-
andexer
Is a phone-line better or worse than an in-person line?
genericanamoly
Worse. At least in an in-person line I can talk to whoever is in line with me, instead of listening to shitty hold music.
Foire
Wonder whether it'd be frightening for "on holders" to be spontaneously conference called into a waiting room, without notice while hold music continues for all of them.
The first one that makes sound would probably be yelled at, as if they were a customer service representative. :X
Hexarcy00
Don't talk to me in line
jethroismaxbaer5772
Time to rock! https://youtu.be/nLpm4aysr8I
Skuggen
The trick is to include data from before the company existed when calculating the average.
Rockafella83
Their baseline is at 4:00am
DrKonrad
Compare to the average number of calls in the past million years, I always receive more calls than average!
DYLANLEE79
Nights and weekends.
grovberg
You have already put more thought into than they have.
Waschbaerkoenig
Much easier:
1. Have hotline hours from 9am-5pm
2. Include the other 16 hours of the day into average
3. ???
4. profit
Audasity
or when they are closed
DarthVaderDidNothingWrong
In 1643 we had zero calls
imnotinthewitnessprotectionprogram
Same for 1642, except for that one Spanish guy jousting with our windmills
sphericalworld
Seems awfully specific. What do you know that you’re not telling us?
ActionJohnnie
Sancho Panza is the real hero.
mksu
Every morning I use Google Maps to check traffic on my way to work, and every morning it tells me there's heavier than normal traffic.
RacecarIsRacecarBackwards
Yeah I guess they could also be like "Clogged as fuck like every morning", but I suppose you'd have to know the place to know what that means.
VolcanoHerder
If they're basing "normal" on the average for the whole day, then the time during your commute is probably heavier than "normal".
But that's stupid, Google should be smart enough to know to calculate it based on "normal for this route AND this time of day".
StellarJay77
Maybe in the before times when Google was a predictable algorithm that could have accurate calculation systems added to it. Now that it's an AI algorithm that adapts itself it is absolute shit at mathematical computation.
mksu
Yeah, but since you can set departure and arrive times and it changes its estimates, it clearly takes time into account. It's probably just using too long of a data window that doesn't allow multiyear construction projects to become "normal" or caring too much about optimal traffic flows that are so rare they're basically a digital cryptid. cryptid.
DMSledge
They do indeed factor in time. I'm driving to the same place at odd hours and it often show "heavier/lighter than normal" when it is rush hour. Just doesn't work reliably any more.
somebackup
google does many many things wrong when it comes to trip estimates. it never sends me on the fastest route home because there's a left turn (I don't take) that gets backed up and makes the road appear congested based on android phones in proximity. Every day I just drive straight past and save five minutes taking that route compare to the alternative. It's honestly pathetic. They employ some real amateurs.
mangosaredelicious
Living in a big city, i hate how Google maps will suggest a route to save MAYBE 3 minutes by zigzagging through a neighborhood with a bunch of stop signs, to then try and make left hand turns across multi lane main roads (without a light). No thanks, I'll take the extra time, drive safe and save myself from the headache
somebackup
100%. it always recommends I take a left at an intersection where I will need to wait at least five minutes to do so. I've only got a stop sign and I'm trying to turn left into a stroad. no one at google knows how to drive clearly.
avenlanzer
Google maps has a "paper road" going down my mother's driveway which looks to be a legitimate shortcut and gets lots of pissed off people pulling up to her house. I know its a trap to catch other services stealing their maps, but its quite amateur to put one down someone's actual driveway and cause the random homeowner endless headache.
IHaveGreatKittenRecipes
We had one of those next to our house (last one on a dead end road) and while very technically you could turn there and go down the treeline, which was a power company access 'road', it was barely a two track if they had been there recently and completely grass covered the rest of the year.
That trap caught someone at least once a week the whole four years we lived there.
somebackup
File a complaint. I have had them change shit on their maps many times.
HelpfulCorn
Yep. GPS took me to completely the wrong address and it was fixed hours after i submitted the change