May I please place you on hold, O noble one?

Many have written about customer service and sundry. What annoys me the most is how ingratiating the customer service folks are trained to be. I find them to be excruciatingly polite. Yes, I do appreciate that you pronounce my oh-my-gosh-it-has-3-syllables name correctly. But do you have to recite "May I please put you on hold while I look up your information?" in the same slow singsong voice each of the 173 times you put me on hold? I mean, do I really have a choice in the matter? Can I actually not be put on hold? The whole experience would be more pleasant if the conversation was close to normal (as opposed to a simulated master-slave conversation, where the supposed master rarely gets the slave to do what he wants). There is no need for the person on the other end to be almost-servile, as long as they understand why I am calling. I say, let's all be human!

Here's where the frustration stems from: I had called this customer service department for the 5th time in 3 days and after being on the line for about 20 minutes, I get "I have checked your account and indeed, it does show -insert original problem statement here-". You think I didn't know that? Why do you think I called in the fifth place? Argh.