Anurag Jain's Blog on Bangalore Events, Travel, IIM Bangalore, IIM, IIMB, Management

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Posted 7:14 PM by Anurag

Potpourri: Customer Relations and Corporate Weasel Words

1) A LESSON FOR ALL EMPLOYEES WHO WORK WITH RUDE CUSTOMERS!!!

"Indeed, an award should go to the Virgin Airlines gate attendant in Sydney some months ago for being customer focused, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo.

A crowded Virgin flight was cancelled after Virgin's 767s had been withdrawn from service. A single attendant was re-booking a Long line of inconvenienced travellers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be NOW". The attendant replied, "I'm sorry sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?" Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone:

May I have your attention please, may I have your attention please," she began - her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. We have a passenger here at Gate14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the Virgin attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "****@@!!!!!! You!"

Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too."

2) A few buzzing-to-the-hilt phrases/words from here:

Situated pedagogy 'I think that this means that how you teach depends a bit on where you teach. ' (From Dr Catherine Scott)

Time Poor 'This from,Gardening Australia magazine, June 2005, "People these days are time poor..." The article was referring to selling your house and recommended that the garden was immaculate, for the potential purchaser's satisfaction.

Geo immobilised ' This morning on ABC 702, during a discussion about nuclear energy, a Greens MP (Ian Cohen?) used the term "Geo Immobilised" when describing the disposal of nuclear waste. What I think he meant to say was they bury it!' [from Murray Whitlocke-Jones] Does anyone have another interpretation? Email us if you do.

Time budget: 'As in "Sorry I over extended my time budget this morning, it was my wifes birthday". No, he was late!

Thoughtshower: 'Brainstorming is itself bad enough (and was apparently banned by the BBC because it was deemed offensive to those suffering from epilepsy), but 'Thoughtshower' is abominable. This site also explains a variant of brainstorming, in 'blamestorming' (where colleagues publicly denounce one another).

Opinionnaire ' I just received an email from the university I am studying at with an attached "opinionnaire". A new word to me, but I presume that this is some kind of questionnaire that is seeking my opinions - undoubtedly an exciting new form of stakeholder consultation!' [from Ben Lawson]

Upward bullying 'Staff picking on managers' [from Alasdair Baird]

Performance Manage Out 'Not happy with an employee? You don't sack, can, dismiss or fire them. You "performance manage them out of the enterprise".' [From Jamie Wodetzki]

Interlock 'A favourite word among project mangers at IBM is "interlock", which I think means "talk to" or "coordinate with". As in: "I will interlock with my wife to see if I can come to dinner tomorrow night"'. [From Arne Lindquist]

Unpack As in: "We need to unpack the issue". I think this comes from an old computer term where a number would be stored in packed format internally and would have to be unpacked to be humanly readable.[From Arne Lindquist]

Visual integrity ' As in: visual integrity of the river landscape. Does this mean - if it looks like a river it must be a river? Or maybe it implies you should be able to trust how it looks? I'm still working this one out! [From Reb]rex$U

1 comments

Comments:

Very interesting!

# posted by

Anonymous : July 31, 2005 10:42 PM