Upon reading just the title, I thought this is going to be about prolonged, slowly spoken automatic pre-IVR messages, which appeared during COVID with "due to the current situation, we kindly ask you to be patient because we're understaffed and have more calls".

Now it's just unspoken "you learned how to wait during COVID so fuck you and wait", often mentioning opening hours, even when you call during those hours, website address and other nonsense before a human is even notified about a phone call at the other end.

Fuck you and wait.

> Instead, this: Hello? … Wait, hello? Can you hear me? Okay, hold on. Ugh. Okay, okay, just a second. I have to get my earphones to connect. Damn it. Okay, never mind, I’ll just hold it up to my head. Hi, ugh, sorry about that.

Noone I know has these issues. The author seems to be impaired in smartphone handling or the US cell infrastructure started to suck. No such issues in Europe to my knowledge. These sound like the issues with Zoom and Meet, not phones. "Can you hear me? Can you see me? Am I presenting?".