For More Options, say "Stop Baby!"

Today, I'm spending most of my day on the phone. I'm doing this because my entire to do list seems to involve calling someone. First, I have to get a land line set up at our house. While I'm doing that, I'll see if I can get a package for our TV as well. Once the land line is up, I have to call our security people and get that started (I know I really should have done that like a month ago). Then there's a call to the doctor's office to set up either a really late nine month check up or a really early 12 month check up for the baby. Also, I need to find out my teaching license number for a job I'm applying to, and that will take a call because I don't think I can find the piece of paper in our storage area at the moment.
I realized last night that I've been putting off everything on my to do list that involves phone calls. Why? 1) I expect to be hassled when I'm doing things over the phone. I'm not sure why I expect this, but I do. I figure either the person I talk to (if I'm lucky enough to get a human) will be incompetent, or rude or both. Call it conditioning or pessimism. Either way, I hate using the phone to conduct business. I was glad not to have to do it at all in Japan. 2) Worse than the hassle of the actual business conducted over the phone is the automated menu that always precedes it. I hate trying to pigeon hole myself before hand. And as often as not, I've found that I really don't fit the menu options, at least lately. For example, I call Verizon to get a phone line and TV added to our internet. The menu says, "For phone information, press 1. For TV press 2." Which do I press?
I have learned a trick to make this easier, though. I'd heard that with the voice menus, mumbling will get you sent to a real human. And guess what? It works! I kind of found this out by accident. I was on the phone and watching Ela, and I said "No, honey, come away from there." instead of "Yes" or "No" and it said, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that." so I thought I'd keep trying. Three mumbles later, I had a human to talk to. Yay! So now I tend to revert to that as soon as the menu gets frustrating. I realize this might be a very old trick, but I probably never would have tried if I hadn't been playing with the baby while calling.
If I ever figure out how to make the humans less frustrating, I'll be sure to let everyone know.