yeah it got really confusing when i managed to make a thing that passed the right side and ended up back on the left after starting a new stack and then crashed because of recursion depth. really need an interactive debugger for that one.
it's a tsunami. uncontrollable, started far away from any normal humans, sweeps up everyone in its wake, and will cause massive damage when it inevitably crashes into a place with lots of people.
funny you should use that example in particular because i recently had the displeasure of using microsoft's phone tree. i was trying to close a dead relative's account and the info on the website was wrong.
they built a phone tree that remembers you. if you try to call in multiple times during some time period (at least several hours) it will just assume you have the same question and skip to your last choice.
the emphasis should be on "failing", not on "and"