Blocking for beginners

I had occasion this afternoon to call a busy switchboard, sophisticated enough to include what was probably a parameter driven holding message. Parameter driven in that the system administrator could vary the message within bounds by varying parameters.

This message is sketched above. An opening recorded message telling you to go elsewhere if you wanted one of the various things which they did not deal with. Then you got a rather jangly jingle which seemed to be a first motif repeated four times, then a second motif, then the first motif, then the second motif again and lastly the first motif. Then a message telling you your queue position. Sometimes this number got smaller, sometimes it seemed to get stuck for several cycles. In any event, back to start of cycle. If you are patient, you hang on for however many cycles it takes to get a person. 

The point of the post is not to complain about having to wait. Rather, it is to observe that the jingle chosen had the effect of making it very hard to read at the same time. It seemed to block out some important part of the brain needed for reading. With a bit of effort, one could read the words, but they did not really sink in. Comprehension was largely missing. With a bit more effort, there was a bit more comprehension, but it was all too much effort. Couldn't be bothered. One just sat back and waited. Or hung up, as the case may be.

I was not expected that a signal coming in through the ears would do so much damage to the signal coming in through the eyes. No doubt a neurologist could explain what was going on in terms of competition for limited resources.

PS 1: I should add that I rather like the small number of switchboards which achieve much the same ends by replacing the jingle with a modest beep, perhaps once every 20 seconds, just to reassure one that the switchboard has still got one on the line and in the queue.

PS 2: several hours later the same afternoon: on this second attempt, reading was rather better. Perhaps the brain was slowly learning to tune out the jingle. Got some reading in and got to a person!