[What does Jesus and war vets have to do with a call center? Read on, brother. Here is a remake of a long-time personal favorite. I just received this updated version, the old one posted last May. Someone changed the pictures.. This feels more dramatic. ]
-----Begin Forwarded Message----
How ALL business phones SHOULD be answered!
GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA . 
Press "1" for English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you learn to speak English 
And remember only two defining forces have ever
offered to die for you,
Jesus Christ
and the American Soldier. 
One died for your soul, 
the other for your freedom.
If you agree...... keep it going
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9 comments:
You're hilarious! I might be writing you up on my blog soon.
Is that crucified Jesus at a rock concert?
Maybe I'll start answering my phone that way, too.
I got this email from my grandpa!!
I love how they put Jesus side by side with soldiers...a great illustration of fanatical Christian nationalism, elevating war to god...
UGH!
I wonder what the average Iraqi would feel about this?
I got this one from my father -- the latest of many -- but one of the yuckiest so far. Great site!
I like the overt white supremacist racism right at the start. How should all business phones be answered? By a friendly, smiling blue-eyed Aryan woman, who we just assume is a native English, and not, Dutch, or Romanian, or French, or even Spanish, speaker (perhaps it's a call center in Spain or Argentina?). Nope, in white-privilege speak, White person = 'Murkin = Speaks English. Dark skinned = swarthy = untrustworthy = speaks some other language that annoys me because I can't understand what they're saying to each other.
But these people seem to get viscerally angry that they have to wait a few extra seconds for the annoying robot voice response system to say "press 1 for english" or "para espaƱol, oprima el nueve" (sp?) or whatever. The only time I was personally annoyed by bilingual signs was on a single trip to Best Buy after they had printed up all their signage in English on top and Spanish below in the exact same font, size, and position, only different colors. So visually it was difficult to see at a glance which part of the sign to try to read (or both parts?). Fortunately, the next time I went to Best Buy, they had made the Spanish text slightly smaller, and certainly it's fair for English to be the language on top, so the free market has come up with a good compromise, and to be pissed off that the Spanish is also there for you to have to look at is xenophobic at best, if not racist in itself. The same thing about having to see Chinese writing on signs, or Korean, or Vietnamese, or Arabic.
But I've come up with a perfect punishment for these sorts of people. Force them to take a job overseas in Tokyo and live for six months surrounded by people who either can't or won't speak English to them, especially if you approach them like an entitled American asshole, as they deal with Spanish speakers on their home turf. And it's even worse because you can't read 95% of the characters on the signs so you couldn't even begin to spell them out phonetically. And you're a racist jerk who hates Japanese people as much as he hates Mexicans. But it's the only way for him to make money to send back to his starving family in Bush's America, just like the "illegal people" he despised back home who are just trying to do the same thing over here.
Having said that, I understand the sentiment that it can often be annoying dealing with call center people who are obviously in Bangalore, or Shanghai, or wherever. When you are reading off a credit card number or the operator is reading it back to you and she just can't understand you or vice versa, that is annoying.
But this is a minor inconvenience to gain the ability to, a) talk to an actual human, which is almost always going to be less frustrating than talking to a voice response system, and b) talk to an actual human at 3am, or 12pm, or 8:30pm in your own time zone. You could be talking to someone in Dublin, Ireland, where has grown so business-friendly and high-tech that I hear that the cost of living is even higher than San Francisco! So they're not doing it purely to screw over old white people who can't hear good or tolerate people with funny accents.
"Force them to take a job overseas in Tokyo and live for six months surrounded by people who either can't or won't speak English to them"
English is taught in Japanese schools. They probably speak it better than most Americans do.
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