When my mother books a plane ticket, she’ll voluntarily get herself bumped in exchange for a later first class ticket on a later flight, plus a free flight anywhere in the nation.

So my mother swung this little scam on a United Airlines flight from JFK to San Francisco, exchanging a 5pm departing flight for a first class flight leaving at 6am and et cetera et cetera. She bussed back to my apartment to gloat.

Too bad the 6am flight got canceled and the airline put my mother on a 7pm flight, which we didn’t learn about until we got the email at 9pm. So, time to call the airline! Yes! Own that IVR!

Except automated self-service doesn’t work particularly well with the peculiar nature of my mother’s request—that is, getting onto another flight with a first class ticket that, technically, she didn’t pay for.

“So it’s not letting me speak to an operator,” my mother said. I was looking at the Gethuman website.

“You have to actually say ‘Operator,’ I think.”

“Operator,” my mother said. “The stupid thing just transferred me to another menu. Operator. Operator. Operator. Operator. Operator! OPERATOR! Oh Christ. Op. Er. Ate. Tor.” And then she did this:

Which was kind of awesome.

It’s funny how corporations with a strong interest in high customer satisfaction still seem go out of their way to commission a labyrinthine IVR system that mostly ticks people off.

Over the course of two hours, my mother spoke with three operators. None of whom, they claimed, actually had the authority to confirm a different flight.