New Millennium Commerce

I was wondering what the most irritating and oft-used phrase is in the English language of the new millennium. I think the winner would probably be “We are currently experiencing a larger volume of calls than usual.” In other words, they don’t have enough staff for the workload; which is probably why they made the mistake that led to your call in the first place. Another one, which often follows it, is “Your call is important to us,” which roughly translates as “Tough! So shop around and see if you can find another company that has more scruples than we have. You won’t, so why bother?”

I’m old enough to remember a time when somebody picked up the phone and said “How can I help you?” And then they did. That was pre-Thatcher, of course.