Voice

When I call the company that manages my corporate pension, I have to go through one of those multiple-choice menus before I get an actual human. I don't mind that at all, but really gets me about this one is that it operates on voice recognition. So instead of pressing 1 for member services, 2 for account balance and so forth, you have to say "member services", or "account balance" or whatever. I work in an open-plan office, and it's sometimes surprisingly quiet, and I hate having to say this stuff into the phone. It could be worse, of course, I was imagining a sadist setting a similar system for a sexual health clinic, so you'd have to say "Chlamydia", "genital herpes", "crabs" and so on.

As I say "member services" or whatever, I say it in a very angry whisper, and with each whisper I seethe more and more. Finally it asks me my membership number, and it says I can tell it or I can type it in on the touchtone pad on my phone, and it very helpfully says that I should do this 'one digit at a time' - just on the offchance that I'm going to mash down all the digits at once.