Yesterday one of my colleagues likened me to a 'tiger playing with a mouse'. She's crazy. I had been on the telephone to some manner of annoying market researcher; the bit that she liked went a little like this:


Him: And what is the annual turnover of your organisation?
Me: I'm not going to discuss that with you.
H: I'm afraid I must have an answer or we cannot continue.
M: [chuckle] Fair enough.
H: No, I mean the question is mandatory for me.
M: That's the issue, isn't it? It's not mandatory for me...

It carried on like that for another line or two before he told me what his categories were and I decided they were vague enough to agree to one. The next fun part was later on:

H: And how many employees does your organisation have?
Given that I deliberately threw in a large rounding error for him, perhaps I'd best not publish the answer online. Suffice to say it's a small company; less than a couple dozen employees
H: And how many of them are in your head office?
M: All of them.
H: And how many client-connected workstations do you have? Would it be around 500?
M: [laugh] Have a look at my answer to the previous question. Do you really think with that many staff we've got 500 computers?

It's good that foreign call centres work tirelessly to inject a little humour into my day.