We all know and love the voice phone menus -- they seem to be everywhere nowdays:

"If you are already our client and wish to inquire about our services, press 1. If you wish to become a client, press 2. If you only speak French, press 3. If you want to kill yourself after listening to all these options (and you know Japanese), press 4."

The good thing is that the best solution is spam 0 at all times, and in most cases that will get you to a real live person (there's an entire site dedicated to that). Either way, the reason I am writing this is a bit different.

I barely escaped a car accident today while returning with my wife and son from Peterhof. Two cars hit into each other on the oncoming lane, and one went flying towards our lanes. I managed to brake out of it, and the unfortunate lady on the Mazda to my right didn't, so it quickly became a 3 car accident instead of 2 car accident. And, as usually happens, the most injured part was the one not involved in the original collision. I parked my car to the side of the road and rushed over to the other car to see if they need any help (not that I know anything about the medicine, even though I am a PhD ;) - primarily, maybe call the ambulance since the parties in the crashed cars would likely be too occupied for a bit to call themselves.

So I took my cell phone and tried to call 03. A quick information on Russian emergency services: we dial 01 for fire dept, 02 for militia (police), 03 for ambulance/ER. Recently, however, there has been a notion to get away from that set of numbers that we were used to for the entire existence of the phone system in this country, in favor of 112, a universal number used through Europe (akin to 911 in the States). In a few years, 01/02/03 numbers will no longer work when you use the landline phones, and 112 will instead.

Either way, someone on the cell network I use have decided that it's time to convert people to 112 now (I realize 112 is a standard GSM emergency number, but 01-02-03 used to work before).

I rushed towards the closest car, dialling 03 on my phone to get to ER. Sadly, all I got was a beep and no answer. I redialled just to notice a text message that flashed on my phone: "For emergency, please use 112". Crap, fine. So I dialled 112.

What would you expect less on an emergency number that is supposed to aid you in urgent, out of control situations? Right, a voice phone menu.

"Please make sure your phone is in tone mode, and dial the number appropriate for your emergency situation: 1 for the fire department, 2 for militia, 3 for ER, 5 to access the paid advisory system."

Ugh? I just don't get why in the world would you need to listen to the voice menu when dialling an emergency number. Let's pretend you're badly injured but you did managed to dial 112 (after all, it's fairly easy to tap on the phone even if you're not conscious enough). But then to get somewhere, you have to listen to the options and tap more buttons - how stupid is that?

Thankfully, nobody died in this particular accident, as far as I know. But getting through voice menus just to get to ER is ridiculous. Get a clue, Megafon. ;)