Basic Trope: A phone hold that lasts for an extremely long time.
- Straight: Bob is put on hold. The hold takes 12 hours.
- Exaggerated: Bob is put on hold, and two seasons later, 2 years have passed, and Bob is still on hold.
- Downplayed: Bob is on hold for 6 hours.
- Justified:
- The company's customer service is very busy.
- The Company's PBX
has (partially) crashed.note
- Inverted: Bob puts the customer service people on hold for a long time.
- Subverted:
- Bob hangs up and tries again, and someone appears to be talking to him this time...
- Bob is just making a Phoney Call and is pretending to be on hold to make it seem more convincing...
- Double Subverted:
- ...but she is actually just faking the conversation, and he is still on hold.
- ...but then he has to call customer service for real and ends up on hold for a long time.
- Parodied: The company's slogan is "Our holds last for days!"
- Zig Zagged: Bob is on hold, and he hangs up and tries again after a few hours. This cycle repeats over and over again.
- Averted: Bob is on hold for only up to an hour.
- Enforced: The producers want to make fun of phone holds that seem to take forever.
- Lampshaded: "I've been waiting for literally days!"
- Invoked: Bob calls customer service despite the fact that the company is very busy that day.
- Exploited: Bob uses the hold as an excuse to be using the phone during "family time".
- Defied: Bob makes sure the company is not busy when he calls customer service.
- Discussed: "Why have you been on hold for so dang long?"
- Conversed: "Why do people on these shows end up on these long phone holds?"
- Implied: Bob's call history shows that at least one phone call lasted for a very long time.
- Deconstructed:
- Due to the long holds, the company loses customers and eventually goes bankrupt.
- Bob gets very hungry and sleep-deprived from waiting on hold.
- Reconstructed:
- More companies find a way to not lose customers to long holds.
- Bob gives up, and after a huge meal and a long rest, he learns never to trust customer service from that company ever again.
- Played For Laughs: The hold music features unusual instruments, and the voice starts saying Inherently Funny Words during the hold.
- Played For Drama: Bob gets very angry at the company for making him wait too long, especially when the customer service is closed, which means all his waiting was for nothing.
- Played For Horror: Bob is being chased by a Serial Killer and calls 911, but gets put on hold. By the time the cops arrive, Bob has been brutally murdered and the killer gets off scot-free.
For Ridiculously Long Phone Hold, please hold. It may be a few hours.
