Phrases We Love to Hate

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Some words and phrases you just love to hate.

How about, do you mind if I put you on hold? I mean, of course I mind. Or how about this one?

Your call is important to us. No, it’s not. If you really cared, I wouldn’t be on hold.

And Grant, I think this is the one that really gets my goat. How about, this is a courtesy call.

I mean, how courteous is it to call me during dinner?

To interrupt at all, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s not just the word sometimes, but it’s the voice, right?

Your call is important to us.

That woman, that one voice.

Yeah, there’s something so condescending and smarmy and oily about it.

Yeah, there was a column in the New York Times by Stanley Fish where he talks about some of these things that we hate to hear.

He thinks sold out is one of those things.

I think sold out is pretty bad, particularly if you’ve been expecting whatever it was that sold out, right?

Well, yeah.

If you were the last person in the line and you get to the window and then, boom, that sign goes up.

A register closed.

You rush down 15 aisles in the supermarket thinking you found the one short line and it turns out that the register is closed.

Yeah, yeah.

There’s just 13 to one last customer.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

What’s the common theme here?

I think the common theme is defeated expectations.

You expect better service or you’re expected some kind of great circumstance and you didn’t get it.

Yeah, I agree.

All right.

So what words and phrases really get to you?

Which are the ones that really make you cringe?

We’d love to hear about it.

Call us at 1-877-929-9673 or you can send your rants to words@waywordradio.org.

We’ll be happy to read them.

And you can tweet them on Twitter to the username Wayword.