Re: [OT] Customers (was Re: [VIC] 2006 Commonwealth Games & Hitachis)

[usenet.spam@gunzel.net (Michael Kurkowski)]

Paul Edwards <p.edwards@its.unimelb.edu.au> wrote in article
<p.edwards-ya023580002508001439500001@news.unimelb.edu.au>: 

>So we've moved from the terms "passenger" and "fare evader" to,
>respectively, "customer" and "passenger" then, eh?

Actually, it was just an observation on my behalf (-:

>I saw a doctor's surgery recently which had a sign "Customers please
>report to reception upon arrival". We've got this remarkably rich
>language, and there seems to be this push to dumb it down to a few key
>phrases like customer or that absolute abomination of PC, partner. [1]

Many people in today's society are stupid enough to require such 
modification to the English language. The biggest one that gets to me at 
the moment is when you are calling a v.big company and you are fed into an 
automatic call distributor, often on hold for more than 15 minutes. Such 
phrases as "Thankyou for calling $vbc customer care line, your call is 
important to us, and we will answer you as soon as possible" coupled with 
music that is supposed to be soothing. 

Such terms as 'customer care', 'customer service' are often misleading, 
whereby if a company really did care about their customers, they call would 
be answered straight away. Customer service and customer care are such 
broadly used terms today. You can have a ticket inspector on a train (whose 
primary role is to check tickets, and issue fines to those who have not got 
a ticket) with the term "customer service employee", through to a slave 
monkey in a call centre with a trained limited vocabulary to create a good 
impression of uniformity with the title "customer service representative". 
Here we see the same name used for two completely opposite roles.

Lets not start on economic rationalisation now!

>The whole thing's not dissimilar to Orwell's Newspeak, really.

Agreed. I have only ever read the first twenty pages of the book in 
question here (i.e. 1984), but it does seem we are moving that way. So much 
in todays society can be attributed to that book though.

>[1] I play bridge or tennis with a partner, I go into business with a
>partner, I have a relationship with my girlfriend, wife, de facto (or
>even spouse)

Likewise, I've also seen the term girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/de facto, 
substituted with 'partner', including that of a business or sport 
relationship.

>[2]. This realization came to me at a party about a year
>ago, where I met this fellow, and we were talking about his business,
>when this woman came up and she was introduced to me as "his partner".
>Given the context of the discussion was his business, it was not clear
>whether he was talking business partner, or girlfriend. As it happened,
>it was business partner, as this couple were quite free of the bigotry
>that PC so often legitimizes. 

Political correctness has a lot to answer for in my opinion. We use this 
political correctness to supposedly overcome discrimination and intolerance 
(note, I did say 'supposedly') but we are creating more ambiguity with the 
english language than already exists. Is it that people just don't want to 
learn and live with such terms that are deemed politically incorrect, 
because it makes certain people feel more comfortable, or as pointed out 
above a sinister attempt to create a 1984 type world? [I'm not really one 
for conspiracy theories however].

>[2] Having said this, I am quite comfortable with the term "partner" for
>people involved in a same sex relationship. Ah, the vagaries of human
>nature...

Michael

(Maybe I'm completely off my trolley on all this - anyway, it's aus.rail, 
i'm not here to be philosophical :) )

-- 
michael [dot] kurkowski {at} gunzel [dot] net