Okay, I know I was writing weekly office posts, but man, not enough happens for that to be a thing. So now they’re just random At The Office posts.

Everybody knows about muzak, right? It’s that weird pseudo jazz music that’s also called “elevator music”. The word comes from a company that was called Muzak whose name came to stand in for all such musical stylings. Except that they never actually made music for elevators. So perhaps that’s why I have NEVER heard music of ANY kind in ANY elevator EVER.

Maybe I’m just not in the right kind of elevator? What elevator do I need to ride to experience elevator music? I don’t know.

What I do know is where I have heard muzak, often and for long periods of time.

While I have occasionally heard it in retail stores, most of the places I find myself in these days play some kind of radio.

However, I recently encountered the more common location of muzak: being on hold.

The printer I always use at the office ran out of ink. Instead of putting more in ourselves, we have to call the printer people and have them send out an ink changing dude to do it for us. I can only assume this is because changing the ink in those printers is impossible without the correct training and/or tools.

So I called the number. And I got to listen to muzak. For twelve minutes.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the recorded lady voice didn’t keep coming on to say ALL REPRESENTATIVES ARE CURRENTLY BUSY PLEASE STAY ON THE LINE FOR THE NEXT AVAILABLE REPRESENTATIVE. Every time the muzak cut out to deliver this message, I got excited because I thought someone was finally answering my call. It took at least five minutes of this message happening every thirty seconds for me to stop getting excited.

What I’d really like to know is whyyyyyy??

I don’t understand the reasoning behind the horror that is hold music (this is the only exception).

I think it’s some kind of creepy, subliminal reason. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that people buy more stuff when listening to music of some kind. Mostly I just want to hang up the phone to spare myself the continued agony.

Unfortunately, I had to stay on the line because we print stuff all day every day and we need that sweet sweet toner. (I don’t know why they call it toner instead of ink. It’s another thing I could Google if I cared at all. But I don’t. So I won’t.)

I think I’ll try to take the elevator as often as possible and maybe one day I’ll find one that plays muzak. However, if I go to my grave having never experienced elevator music, I will neither care nor be surprised.