Autism

I absolutely loath phone calls and will only take/call if it's a last resort or dire. If there's not an option for callback, I'll do something similar to you- speaker phone with volume down, but I'll make sure my screen stays on and in front of me so I don't forget that I'm on hold. I'll then browse my pc or occupy myself with something else (normally taking notes about what I need to talk about). I have to keep the screen in view or else I'll have immediate anxiety the moment it finally connects.

Finding out a business or service doesn't have an email or written communication option is always such a mental burden.

Play games on pc till the human starts to speak then pause /quit game.

I absolutely hate it. I get stuck in "waiting mode" because I have to be paying enough attention to the phone that I can't do much else.

Effectively I either plan in wasting 30-60 minutes of my life for these calls, or I do my utmost to avoid them entirely. If there is an online support or email option, I will go with that first since I don't have to be waiting and they can either phone me when they get to it or email me a reply.

I often do something else on the phone that takes minimal effort and can be stopped at any time.

My normal choices are sudoku, crossword, 2048, or an idle game.

These hold systems (except the ones with a callback option) are absolutely not designed for disabilities, and I doubt they were even designed for human interaction. Forcing someone to actively wait is either a terrible oversight, or intentionally harmful design (i.e. to reduce the number of calls they need to handle).

So I work in a call center and am frequently on the other side of this exchange. In a lot of cases, you can request to be on hold with no music! They play music on those lines as a way of letting the caller know that the representative can't hear you right now. If you ask 'Instead of placing me on hold, can you just mute yourself while you work because the music bothers me?' 90% of the time they'll do just that, since having people on hold is bad for their metrics.

This won't work in situations where the representative needs to call someone and speak to them on a separate line as the system is always going to play music on an inactive line, but in those instances you can request they merge the call so you're on the same line with them!

Either way, most places are going to have a phone system that can get around the annoying music, and if you ask politely, most reps are going to be fine with trying to spare you the music. Hope this helps :)

99% my partner does this. I'm sorry, but can't. I look up other ways: mail, web forms, whatever.

The rare case I suffer through it.

I use the call hold feature on iOS now.

Hmm, someone should make a self-hosted AI app that makes the calls for you. Fight fire with fire, I guess. And just ping you when the music stops playing, so you can take over while the AI stalls.