Awhile back, I called my local police department because I realized I was going to have to start wearing a whistle (for emergency purposes) after my voice started failing. I started explaining to the dispatcher that I needed a professional whistle to wear all the time, due to my vocal disorder. She hung up. So, I called right back and said to her, "you hung up on me!" and you know what she said to me? "I couldn't hear you." Is that a major *DUH!* or what?

Your movie story is interesting because now that I have to keep from talking, my friends are saying that they don't want to strain my voice so "let's go to a movie together so you won't have to talk." I wonder what was so hard about putting the times in the paper and having that recorder?

Yesterday, I had to get an 800 toll-free number from Directory Assistance and evidently that service has recently gone *voice-activated.* Same thing with you. I couldn't get it to engage. And, of course (on the other end) there's this clear, loud, smoothe, authoritative computer voice saying, "I can't hear you." Right...like I have to be reminded by a computer.

Thanks Renee. I feel better now. Life is certainly full of ironies.

--Lynne (AD/SD; Northern California)

One non-voice alternative is to go to My Yahoo.com. You can set up your home page to display the movie theatres in your area. Then, every time you open your homepage, you can see the latest times. You can also click on links to movie reviews. I use this all the time. It's actually very good, and definitely avoids having to deal with the voice.

Will, you seem to have the right attitude from what I'm reading. If they're gonna use voice-automated stuff, why not speak the card number? They'll ultimately get an operator on the phone. Of course I'd usually just type the darn number in but occasionally I get more brave.

Here's another one for you. We need to collect these things. This one today was a classic.

I called Amtrak because I have to pick up my son soon and wanted to know what time the train was arriving and got the funniest (and most frustrating) "Voice Recognition System" so far. There's some computer recording on there who introduces itself as "Julie" and says things like..."OK now" as if you were conversing with a real human.

And, then, after going through all the vocal-contortions of trying to say the WORD "Schedule" or the WORD "Information" and the WORD "Help" (their options) and they keep saying they can't understand me and keep sending me back to the beginning, I waited and pressed "star" and alot of other things, still getting put back to the beginning of the recording. No agent ever came on.

Then I just decided to make alot of racket in the background, like banging with pans, etc? Finally, I got a new computerized word - they said "say the WORD "Agent." (Expletives deleted on my part). I yelled out the word "Agent" as loud as I could and started pounding on the kitchen counter. After three major pounds, a human actually came on.

Poor woman. She got an earful but said I could write to Customer Service. Yeh, right.

BTW, I was talking to my cousins at Thanksgiving about this same issue. They all have normal voices and one of them said they had the same trouble. The problem is...it affects SD'ers worse, with all the effort in talking. After all of this, we get major migraines.

Maybe they will get tired of hearing my voice and change the system!

I told them the exact same thing you did (see above in this thread - fighting with the Amtrak "voice recognition" system) but seems they will wear us down before we wear them down, unfortunately. They appear to have more "air" and corporate power than we do. Dog-gone-it!

But, guess we all know by now that life isn't fair. Oh well.

--Lynne