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If you want to come up with anything from a modest insight to a
breakthrough discovery, first you have to learn to see things the way they really are.
The very best creative minds rely on a built-in, finely tuned
bullshit
detector.
As an exercise in seeing things as they really are, I suggest you call a
customer
service representative. Did your scam alarm go off just now? It should have. There's
no such thing as a customer service representative. The people you talk to
when you call "customer service" are actually company representatives hired to
1. calm you down after you've waited for 20 to 45 minutes listening to
mind-numbing music, 2. make you think the problem is your fault or to blame
it on another vendor, and 3. try to sell you an extended warranty.
All of these phone drones are well versed in stock euphemisms--precisely the
kind of deceit you must learn to detect. You'll find double-talk gold in the
call centers of the most monopolistic organizations. They get the
most complaints and care the least about making their shoddy products or services right.
As you'd expect, they've developed the most muscular complaint-deflection capabilities.
Nobody's better at telling it as it ain't.
Where I live, the leader of the pack has to be my local telephone land line
and DSL provider. When they answer (sometimes they literally do not
answer), the shower of sham begins with a cold, officious voice rattling off menu options. You can tell her heart's
not it. Most likely her supervisor made her do the recording in retaliation for empathizing with a caller. The
woman I usually hear must have some integrity, because her voice clearly
signals the fact that there's no truth to what she's saying. I appreciate
that in a shill.
For our sham-spotting exercise, see how many disguised lies you can expose
as you slog through a typical call-menu maze. To get you started, here are a
few I've translated for you.
Add your own.
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