useless phrases
Nov. 9th, 2006 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spatchThere's a lot of useless phrases around us. So useless they can't even claim to be cliche. They're useless because they're used in an attempt to get us to take notice, but we've heard them so many times we know they don't mean nothin.
Take, for example, the fun phrase you hear every time you call an automated phone tree system.
"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed."
Judging from the number of times I hear that in a day when making calls out, there must be a brisk business in Phone Tree Option Changing. Perhaps it's a career worth looking into. "Gentlemen, for the last two quarters now we've had callers pressing 1 for financial services, 2 for press inquiries, 3 for the company directory, and if they need an operator, to press zero or just stay on the line. Para espanol, oprimo numero quatro. But we cannot continue to produce the results our investors expect from us if we stay stagnant! We must have a phone tree shake-up!"
On the other hand, I've used the same bank for going on 6 years now, and every time they say "Our menu options have changed" and every time I just keep hitting the same numbers I always hit and I always end up hearing my balance, which is what I was calling for in the first place. Someday, however, I just know they're going to call my calling their bluff, and change their options around just to spite me, and I'll hit the same numbers I always hit and instead of hearing my balance, I'll have just transferred all my money to the bank president's offshore account.
Along with Menu Option Changer, another hot job must be Hotel Renovator. If you believe every hotel description you read online, every single goddamn hotel is "newly-renovated." Hotels are constantly being renovated in ad copy land. In fact, it's difficult to get a good night's sleep anywhere anymore, owing to the constant renovations going on, day and night. But hip hip hooray! That cockroach infested hovel you barely got two hours' sleep in last year is apparently now new and spiffy and shiny and comparable to the Savoy! (Hell, it was the Savoy!)
What other useless phrases do you enjoy on a daily basis, though you refuse to let them do what they were intended to do?
Take, for example, the fun phrase you hear every time you call an automated phone tree system.
"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed."
Judging from the number of times I hear that in a day when making calls out, there must be a brisk business in Phone Tree Option Changing. Perhaps it's a career worth looking into. "Gentlemen, for the last two quarters now we've had callers pressing 1 for financial services, 2 for press inquiries, 3 for the company directory, and if they need an operator, to press zero or just stay on the line. Para espanol, oprimo numero quatro. But we cannot continue to produce the results our investors expect from us if we stay stagnant! We must have a phone tree shake-up!"
On the other hand, I've used the same bank for going on 6 years now, and every time they say "Our menu options have changed" and every time I just keep hitting the same numbers I always hit and I always end up hearing my balance, which is what I was calling for in the first place. Someday, however, I just know they're going to call my calling their bluff, and change their options around just to spite me, and I'll hit the same numbers I always hit and instead of hearing my balance, I'll have just transferred all my money to the bank president's offshore account.
Along with Menu Option Changer, another hot job must be Hotel Renovator. If you believe every hotel description you read online, every single goddamn hotel is "newly-renovated." Hotels are constantly being renovated in ad copy land. In fact, it's difficult to get a good night's sleep anywhere anymore, owing to the constant renovations going on, day and night. But hip hip hooray! That cockroach infested hovel you barely got two hours' sleep in last year is apparently now new and spiffy and shiny and comparable to the Savoy! (Hell, it was the Savoy!)
What other useless phrases do you enjoy on a daily basis, though you refuse to let them do what they were intended to do?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 08:00 pm (UTC)"Please enter your account number so that the account representative may expedite your request."
Or somesuch variant. I've never entered that number and then had someone answer my call who didn't ask for it again. Either it's just a way of weeding out the accountless riffraff, or companies want to appear more technologically advanced than they really are.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 11:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-10 11:48 pm (UTC)My god. I worked at a place that had that EXACT SAME PROBLEM.
"Thank you for calling, my name is Bob Dobalina, may I have your 16-digit account number, please?"
"I just punched it in! Why are you asking me for it? Hold on, let me get my card out again..."
This only slightly beats out the roadside assistance job, which required us to ask people stranded on the side of the road to read their entire Vehicle Identification Number to us. We'd tell folks the VIN was on their registration card, but I always had jackasses who'd get out of the car ON A BUSY HIGHWAY so they could bend over the side of the car, peering through the windshield, to read it off the driver's side dashboard.
Was that an S as in Sam or a F as in Frank?
Was that a T as in Tom or P as in Peter?
"...and this one I don't know, it's an O or a zero, I can't tell..."
JUST SIT IN YOUR CAR, SAFE FROM GETTING HIT, AND READ IT TO ME FROM YOUR REGISTRATION.