seems that your call is not important at least not to them. martha teichner will be reporting our cover story. >> your call is important to us. thank you for holding. (music) >> reporter: how well you know that this is your punishment if that product or service you bought goes wrong. sqoo we're there. we're sitting on hold. we're being sometimes degraded. it starts to bring up so many other feelings. >> reporter: so if you're mad as hell, please hold. someone will be with you. later this sunday morning. >> osgood: even now we're talking about talk shows this morning. richard schlesinger hears from one of the most acclaimed representatives of the genre, dick cavett. >> the dick cavett show. >> reporter: dick cavett was the kind of talk show host who was equally comfortable with pop, counterand high culture and who, with apologies to my superiors, probably wouldn't stand a chance on commercial tv today. you are-- and i'll use the i word-- intellectual. >> if it pleases you to use it, who am i to deny you that pleasure? >> reporter: later on sunday morning, matching witts with dick cavett. >> osgood: for a genuine ordeal it's hard to imagine anything more horrible than the real-life story that just has been turned into a motion picture. the man to whom it happened and the man who portrays him on the screen both talk this morning with serena altschul. >> reporter: when a falling bolder in a remote utah canyon trapped aaron ralston, he knew there was only one way out. >> it was a conversation i had outloud with myself. you're going to have to cut your arm off, aaron. >> reporter: his story is now a movie starring james franco. aaron ralston, in person and on screen coming up on sunday morning. >> osgood: say the phrase coal miner's daughter to just about anybody in this country and they'll know exactly who you mean. loretta lynn is a singer with a distinctive style and sings the way she talks and talks the way she sings. she talks this morning with our mo rocca. ♪ that clothes line ♪ good-bye pots and pans > loretta lynn arrived in nashville 50 years ago. >> did nash vile try to change you at all? >> well, everybody tried to learn me how to talk. i told them they was wasting their time. i been talking this way all my life. ♪ proud to be a coal miner's daughter ♪ ♪ i remember well the well where i drew water ♪ > you know her as the coal miner's daughter. later on sunday morning. >> osgood: rita braver shares a presidential photo album. david martin asks if we're giving out too few medals of honor. fast draw as well. first the headlines for this sunday morning the 7th of november, 2010. day 2 of president obama's india visit. this morning mr. obama danced with school children in mumbai before heading to new dehli. the president is using the trip to promote trade with india and to defend american support of its arch rival pakistan. haiti finally caught a break this weekend. although hurricane tomas caused 8 deaths and left behind massive flooding, it only passed over the country's far western edge. that storm is now south of bermuda and headed out to sea. it was not to be. horse racing super star zenyatta lost in a photo finish to blaine at the breeder's cup classic in louisville yesterday. the six-year-old mare was trying to finish her career with 20 straight wins. after surviving 69 days below ground, running 26 miles may not seem like much of a challenge. for chilean miner edison pena spent the last few days taking in the sights before competing in today's new york city marathon. though he's never run more than ten miles at a time. this just in. as of tomorrow, queen elizabeth will have a face book page. the 84-year-old monarch is already on twitter, and started a video channel on u- tube three years ago. maybe she can be your friend. cool air is covering much of the country with temperatures topping out in the 40s in the northeast. the west coast will be dealing with some november rain. the next few days should be mostly dryer and mostly warmer than today. enjoy it while you can. >> i can't help noticing your hat. >> my hat? i don't understand what's wrong with it. >> osgood: ahead we talk the talk with talk show legend dick cavett.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, >> osgood: do you recognize that music? not from the radio or an i-pod but from your phone. it's the sort of music they play when your call gets put on hold. their way of saying your call is not important to us. our cover story is reported now by martha teichner. (dog barking) >> reporter: at 78 with her heart condition, mona shaw doesn't seem like the violent type. she and her husband don live near manasseh virginia and rescue old or disabled dogs. comcast had screwed up their phone service. they just wanted it back. >> we had been down there. we had been to the office and asked to speak to the manager or a superviseor. they put us on a bench out in the hallway, said we'll get him for you. two hours later they walked out and said, oh, he went home. >> reporter: that was a friday in august 2007. by monday afternoon after a week without a phone, mona shaw was mad. >> then i thought, okay, let's see. a hammer. >> reporter: see the pin on her collar? >> so i walked in, walked past a whole bunch of people standing in line and leaned over the counter and started smashing the tickets... the dickens out of their computer and telephone. one woman got up and ran. she just took off running. and i said, have i got your attention now? >> your call is important to us. thank you for holding. (music) >> reporter: admit it. when you're on hold in customer service hell and the robotic voice tells you "the average wait time is 89 minutes." deep down wouldn't you like to get a hammer too? >> when we call, what we want is yes. that's it. >> reporter: emily yellin is the author of "your call is not that important to us," a cold, hard look at customer service in the united states. >> i go and talk all over the country about this now. every audience i ever go to, i ask them who in here has never had a bad experience with customer service? >> reporter: and? >> no one has ever raised their hand. >> reporter: yellin cites a 2007 study showing that american call centers.... >> my name is toby. how can i help you? >> reporter:... receive 43 billion calls a year. >> this is beth. how can i help you today. >> reporter: based on bureau of labor statistics data, she estimates that three million people work in call centers in the united states, another two million in centers around the globe. >> where is everybody? >> we had to do a little right- sizing. >> reporter: this clip from the nbc sit-com outsourced sums up our stereotype of customer service. >> yesterday we outsourced the entire call center to india. >> you bastard. >> that's for me. >> the most striking thing is how much it costs to have a live american agent answer a call. >> my name is ed. how may i help you? >> a live agent is about $7.50 per call. >> my name is sean. >> my name is nancy. >> my name is richardo. >> to outsource to a foreign country and have a live agent in a foreign country is about $2.35 a call. to use one of those voice response systems, the press one for this and press 2 for that is about 35 cents a call. a lot of companies saved a whole lot of money and everybody was happy except the customer and really i think a lot of customer service agents who had to mop up after this. >> reporter: it should come as no surprise that the telephone has been a source of customer ire ever since it was invented. >> boy operators man the switchboards in those days. >> reporter: but they were so rude to callers they were replaced by young women who became known as "hello girls." in 1890, mark twain complained that his phone service in hartford connecticut was the very worst on the face of the whole earth. he went on "and if you try to curse through the telephone, they shut you off." today, that feeling of helpless rage has become an american fact of life. michael douglas in the film "falling down" could have been any of us. >> hey, i'm really sorry. >> yeah. >> hey, i'm really sorry too. >> in the four times we've done the study 70% or more of american households who say i had a problem with a product or service say that they experienceded rage. >> reporter: scott runs customer care measurement and consulting in alexandria virginia. since 2003, together with arizona state university, he's been publishing the customer rage study. >> what's really telling is we also ask people what did you get? and 60% of complainers... six tee-- said they got nothing in response to their complaint. nothing. >> reporter: but that may be changing thanks to the internet. >> on the beach. frolicing. >> reporter: a couple on vacation in mexico adopted him. delta airlines lost him. >> posted the story. posted the picture. >> reporter: ben hop kin is managing editor of consumerist hopkins posted that story too. >> the technician himself got on hold with comcast. he fell asleep because he was on hold so long with the tech support department of his own company. so our job at consumerist is to scoop up those horror stories and shove them into the spotlight with our flood of traffic and sort of stick them under the noses and hopefully that it will go up the ladder. once you can get it to that level and people can see the human face on the problem, you can start to see some changes in the marketplace. >> reporter: two to three million people a month read the website which was recently bought by the publisher of consumer reports. >> these days an individual consumer can put their true tale out there and really start a p.r.fire storm for that company. >> reporter: consumerist.com is just one of several internet sites forcing corporate america to pay attention. >> our philosophy is we are about customer service. that's what we live and die by. >> reporter: not all companies see customer service only as a necessary evil. sheila herald is vice president of customer service operations for fed-ex which handled 350,000 calls a day. >> they can call, tweet, email, chat. they can get us and we can help them solve the problem. >> this is brenda with the fed- ex customer advocate team. >> this is rachael with fed-ex. how are you doing. >> reporter: fed-ex encourages that attitude. at its memphis call center, you can see this woman's desk full of awards. >> i think it's just another opportunity is the way i look at it. an opportunity to turn the situation around and have a satisfied customer. >> i'm a perfectionist. at least i try to be. >> reporter: speaking of attitude, even comcast has undertaken some radical readjustments. >> we're only as good as our word. >> reporter: now a footnote. mona shaw, hammer woman, received a free trip to california to tell her story on dr. phil. >> i had to do something to get a manager. >> reporter: and the hammer? she gave it to her church which auctioned it off for $180. providing mona shaw with an exquisite feeling of customer satisfaction. >> osgood: coming up madam curie and her elephant. know what gets me out of bed early? breakfast at subway! [ male announcer ] a big day deserves a better breakfast. choose from a dee-licious lineup of our newest $5 footlong breakfast melts, like the sunrise subway melt. [ strahan ] subway. build your better breakfast. >> now a page from our sunday morning almanac. november 7, 1867, 143 years ago today for that was the day marie curie was born in warsaw. facing sexist barriers at home she went to paris to study science. in 1895 she married a physics professor named pierre curie. together they researched radioactivity, went on to discover the element radium. >> now we find how much energy it has. >> osgood: their breakthroughs were dramatized in the 1943 film madam curi. >> yes. what if there is a kind of matter in the world we never dreamed of. >> reporter: along with the third scientist pierre and marie shared the 1903 nobel prize in physics, the first nobel ever awarded to a woman. after her husband's death in 1906 madam curie continued her research. in 1911 she won a second nobel, solo this time, in chemistry. famous around the world, madam curie devoted her later years to scientific and charitable causes. she died in 1934 at age 66 from an illness almost certainly caused by years of exposure to radiation. dangers even she was slow to realize. today she lies next to her husband in the pantheon in paris where street signs honor their memory. back in her homeland, polish currency bears her image while all over the world scientists, both men and women, measure radiation in a unit known as the curie. >> osgood: next, hail to the chiefs. presidential photographers through the years. eats prevacid. just one pill helps keep you heartburn free for a full 24 hours. prevent the acid that causes frequent heartburn with prevacid®24hr, all day, all night. nothing works better. one made with only real cheese. a pizza my family will love. [ female announcer ] freschetta naturally rising crust pizza. no other pizza tastes like freschetta, because no other pizza is made like freschetta. [ man ] i thought our family business would always be boots. until one day, my daughter showed me a designer handbag. and like that, we had a new side to our business. [ male announcer ] when businesses see an opportunity, the hartford is there. protecting their employees and property and helping them prepare for the future. nice boots. nice bag. [ male announcer ] see how the hartford helps businesses at achievewhatsahead.com. [ male announcer ] see how the hartford helps businesses what are you looking at? logistics. ben? the ups guy? no, you see ben, i see logistics. logistics? think--ben is new markets. ben is global access-- china and beyond. ben is a smarter supply chain. ben is higher margins. happier customers... everybody wins. logistics. exactly. see you guys tomorrow. >> osgood: if a picture is truly worth a thousand words, this photograph of president obama's reaction to this past week's midterm elections speaks volumes. no modern president can escape a camera not even when he's behind closed doors as rita braver will now prove. >> reporter: what really goes on inside the world's most powerful office? tourists can only glimpse the outside. news crews mostly capture staged events. but only one person sees and photographs everything. who decides when you can get into a moment? >> i just walk in. >> reporter: pete souza is the chief white house photographer. a former newspaper photographer, hand picked by president barack obama to snapshots both political and plift. taking some 20,000 pictures every month. you've been quoted as saying you are the luckiest s.o.b.photographer in the world. why? >> i am. right now i'm focused on documenting this presidency for history. i'm not worried about tomorrow's newspaper or next week's magazine. i'm worried about creating a body of work that will last, you know, hopefully maybe 500 years. >> reporter: it is souza's second tour here. >> all right. let's go. >> reporter: he was an assistant photographer in the reagan white house who jump at the chance to document history once more. every one of his photos goes into the national archives for later release. the white house publishes 75 online each month month and a few make it on to the white house walls. here is the president playfully adding weight to one of his staffers. that is such a funny shot. >> you can't plan for something like this to happen. it just happens. >> reporter: but you have to be ready. >> you have to be ready. >> reporter: one of the president's favorites was taken when he met the family of a white house worker. >> and his son very shyly said, mr. president, i just had my haircut like yours. can i see if your head feels like mine. you know, the president bends over. oh, my god. one frame. >> i put down my head so he could examine my hair. he helpfully pointed out all the gray hairs. then he decided to pat me on the head just to get a feel for it. pete took a picture. i think that one has stayed up through the whole year-and-a-half. just because it reminds me not to take yourself too seriously. >> reporter: president obama spoke to "national geographic" for a documentary to be aired later this month on pbs and for a companion book. obama and his photographer have an understanding. souza is free to photograph as long as he doesn't disdisclose what he overhears. >> there's nothing that pete would do that in any way i would be worried about. i think he feels the same way that i've got his back. so pete really does feel like part of the family. >> reporter: photographers were outsiders for most of presidential history. (hail to the chief) >> reporter: james polk in 1846 was the first to be immortalized with his cabinet. there are photos of james buchanan, andrew jackson and john quincy adams. abraham lincoln struck a pose before a campaign speech. 100 years later, john kennedy became the first president to appoint an official white house photographer. private moments with caroline and john-john added to j.f.k.'s image then and still touch a cord. president lyndon johnson had a face that revealed everything and a style that held back nothing. jimmy carter is the only modern day president not to have a white house photographer. richard nixon had one. but when it came to his resignation speech perhaps the most memorable event of nixon's presidency, atkins was banished. >> ollie? only the cbs crew now is to be in this room during this. only the crew. there will be no picture. no. after the broadcast. you've taken your picture. didn't you take one just now? that's it. >> reporter: the unforgettable picture from the next day of nixon looking back at white house he was leaving was taken by david kennerly soon to become photographer to president gerald ford, nixon's successor. kennerly, one of only four living former chief white house photographers, had intimate access to both the president and his wife betty. >> the day before the fords left office, mrs. ford was wandering around in the west wing, shaking hands, saying good-bye. we walked by the cabinet room which was empty. this male domain. mrs. ford, who had a twinkle in her eye, said i've always wanted to dance on the cabinet room table. she took her shoes off, jumped up, struck a pose. i took a picture. she jumped back off, kind of brushed her hands and said i think that will do it. >> reporter: david val degrees really got to know the whole george h.w.bush family. >> there they were with, you know, george and barbara bush. they were all just having that private moment one morning. you know, i was fortunate enough to be there. >> reporter: robert macneily remembers the dignified bill clinton. >> my favorite picture is him at the door of the oval office but it captures this energy. he comes off the page at you. >> reporter: and the president who could bawl out aide george stephanapolous. >> this is bill clinton. this is part of who he is. but if i take it and he sees me take it, i'm not going to get that full blast right in the face. he's doing george. i got to liking it. i'm like i didn't frame it. i've got it set, the exposure set. whew! man, i did it. >> reporter: eric draper was with president george w. bush on september 11. >> the president turned to see the very first images of flight 77 hitting the second tower. another image when we learned that we were being escorted by fighter jets. that's when it truly sunk in, in terms of that we were, you know, really at war. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> reporter: and now it's pete souza's responsibility to provide not just a good picture of what goes on behind all those closed doors but a true picture. for now and for the future. you have a very favorite obama picture that you've taken? >> you know, i don't. others do. when i ask... when somebody asks me that question,