In praise of rude nerds

The call centre problem — I’ve solved it. I now know how to get good service. The secret is to keep ringing back until you get a rude operative. Because, in this world at least, rude is the new polite.

Admittedly it only works for technical help-lines, rather than call centres in general. But boy does it work. ‘Boy’ being the operative word — we’re talking here about the generation of young males who spent their teenage lives locked in bedrooms playing Call of Duty. Finally they were torn bodily from their consoles and booted out of the door by despairing parents. Confronted with that terrifying thing known as the ‘real world’, they latched on to the only source of employment which allows them to maintain 24-hour contact with their beloved technology: manning (again, operative word) the phones at technical helplines. They have the social skills of a breeze-block — but by Christ can they tell you how to defrag a hard-drive.