Voice Mail Nightmare

Recently I made a frustrating attempt to order tickets to “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” using an automated phone service. When asked to punch in the first 3 letters of the movie title, I didn’t know whether to enter T-I-M, T-H-E or N-I-G. It didn’t accept T-I-M, but did take T-H-E, except that it said I had selected “The Age of Innocence.”

I got lost wading through all the unwanted information that followed, so I hung up and dialed again. I got the title right this time, but, despite that fact that Burton’s movie was playing at only one theater at the time, I had to navigate through a confusing series of choices involving counties, cities, areas of the city and even ZIP codes to locate the theater! Finally, as instructed, I pushed the appropriate button on the phone to place an order, but no matter how many times I tried, my action was not acknowledged.

So I decided to see “Short Cuts” instead and called the number listed in their ad. To my horror I found myself connected to the same automated service as before, and, even though “Short Cuts” was also then playing at only one theater, I had to make a seemingly endless number of choices to get to that theater. And again, after all that, the recording would not acknowledge my request to purchase tickets.

Eventually I gave up. To let off steam I went out to lunch and blew a wad at Tower Records. Is there an “I-Hate-Voice-Mail” club out there?

STACE ASPEY

Long Beach