…well… indirectly. As I’m sure you are aware, the majority of the world’s call centers are based in India due to the readily available cheap labour there. The others are unaccountably based in heavily accented areas of Britain such as Liverpool or Scotland. It is more than likely that each and every one of you has had to call one of these god awful places, or has received a call from one trying to sell you something you don’t want.

You have no doubt battled with the operator, trying desperately to cling on to every, mispronounced word, and frantically attempting to decypher the pigeon English in your head into something vaguely coherant. The average citizen, however, only has to deal with these frankly distressing phone calls perhaps once or twice a year. Now immagine that you work in a profession which involves phoning Microsoft for every little niggling point when Windows just won’t accept that CD key, or, when it does, it doesnt want to validate itself, instead throwing a big tantrum and threatening to disable itself in 30 days unless you type in a magic number which only Microsoft employees are aware of.

I suppose there is an upside of the Microsoft call centres; that is the operators themselves seem to be semi retarded. You can pretty much tell them whatever you want and they will be unable to know what you mean so just unlock the computer for you. Thus:
Caller: Please can you activate my copy of Windows XP?
Operator: Is it only on one computer?
Caller: No, I work for an Islamic militant group and we need Windows on our laptops used for bombing the Western world
Operator: OK sir, your new key is…

You see my point I’m sure.