The Abject Cruelty of Hold Music

A large number of barristers' chambers in Sydney use, as their hold music, the kind of Muzak typically played on airplanes when one has landed and is waiting to disembark.

I do not know whether this choice of music is deliberate, and intended to cause misery in the listener, but it does, certainly in this listener. While on hold I am confronted by the knowledge that I am not in a plane, not in a foreign destination, not travelling, not on holiday, but - sadly - at work, in my office, waiting to speak with a barrister about a conference that afternoon for which I have yet to prepare.

Cruelty indeed.