Don't Worry Bombay-bee

Whenever I am on the phone with a company's technical support department in India, the representative repeats the phrase "don't worry." Actually, it's more like "don't vorry." I find this phrase really patronizing and really annoying.

It happens every time I call Dell technical support. The other day, it also happened when I called Time Warner Cable's technical support. Apparently, there's a master call center or two in India (located, I believe, in Bangalore) where the training supervisors, among other things, teach the representatives to say "don't worry."

It's not up to these representatives to judge whether the customer is worried or not, or to suggest what state of mind we should maintain. That is very insulting. Rather, it's their job to try and solve our problem (the success rate for which, in my case, by the way, is far from 100%).

Speaking of state of mind, however, instead of staying annoyed when this happens, I now turn it into a joke. When I spoke to the Time Warner representative the other day and she said "don't vorry" for the first time, I politely asked her not to say this to me. When she said it for the second time, I started counting and said "that's twice." By the time she said "don't vorry" for the fourth time, we were both laughing.

Which, incidentally, is the best way to stop worrying.