Press 1 to Lose Your Mind

You already know this feeling. You blocked out twenty minutes because the thing should take five. You had the account number ready. You were being reasonable.

The moment the robot picked up and offered you seven numbered options — none of which matched what you actually needed — something inside you started a slow, quiet burn. By option five, you were running mental arithmetic on how long this was going to take. By the third transfer, you had given your zip code to three separate strangers who each had absolutely no notes from the last person. The hold music, that inoffensive four-bar flute loop cycling back around for the sixth time, started to feel personal.

Press 1 to Lose Your Mind is Episode 9 of The Daily Diss — a first-person account of that exact hour, rapped out with the precision of someone filing an official grievance and the energy of someone who will absolutely not be filing an official grievance because that would just put them back on hold. The hook hits every time the narrator lands back at square one (same place, same place), and the outro arrives at the only logical conclusion available: close the phone app, open a browser, find a Reddit thread from 2019, and accept that the dead link at the end of it is as far as this story goes.

The beat brings in a couple of guests this week — a fragment of cheesy 70s elevator-music flute chopped up as percussion, and a DTMF keypad boop sequence that dots the rhythm like a very bureaucratic hi-hat. The rest of the sound is the show's usual pocket: punchy low-end, snappy snare, that vinyl crackle sitting just under everything.

Drop in at quitting time. You've probably already earned it today.