“Thank you for calling [insert organization name here]. In order to serve you, our valued customer, more effectively, we have provided this automated answering system to quickly direct you to a department representative you can speak with.”

Darin Johnson listened patiently and followed along. But after several holds, touch-tone button responses, and voice recognition replies, even he got frustrated.

“I’m a pretty patient person,” said Johnson, a sophomore from Jerome, Idaho. “But after a while those answering systems can get annoying.”

Nancy Friedman, the “Telephone Doctor,” who consults for corporations around the country, said the voice mail system isn’t the problem or even the issue.

“It’s the dreaded automated attendant that most of us get fed up with,” she said. “Voicemail systems are neither good nor bad, they are tools that, if used properly, can be the time-saving conveniences their manufacturers say they are.”

“We either swear by it or swear at it,” Friedman said of voice mail systems.

Avaya is a provider of intelligent communication, and offers automated answering systems to large enterprises. It states its services will “more efficiently and effectively connect customers with the right people and processes, across locations and business functions.”

Corporations, governments and even small businesses are using answering systems instead of real people.

Take United Airlines for example. Some students asked were guided around their touch-tone keypad for upwards of 16 minutes before they reached a real person. Students have spent more than 30 minutes attempting to connect with a Dell service representative.

But some companies are combating the answering machine phenomenon.

In May 2000, Bank One shareholders blasted executives at their annual meeting for difficulties in getting a person on the phone when they called.

And those who want human interaction are finding ways to get it. Web sites like gethuman.com provide strategies to find shortcuts to live phone operators.