Sky support dubs Germany 'Hitler's country' It seems that it's not just the Greeks who are comparing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Nazi-leader Hitler: Sky support seems to share the view that Germany is still in thrall to the long-dead dictator. An El Reg reader preparing to move to the country of lederhosen and oompah bands was explaining his decision to Sky's …
Oh dear, you should be!
This another example of political correctness gone mad? In effect, a name simply associated with a country is not offensive in any shape or form. Although if for example the customer support agent added "Hitler[']s country[, where he will gas you ya filthy Jew!]", now that is pretty much universally unnacceptable.
Epic fail.
Followed by a nice little bit of recycling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderaktion_1005
I think it is a little unfair to modern Germans, for example, if you want to find people who like to pretend that the above didn't happen in their country, then you need to look a bit further east.
Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German.
It's an old joke (regardless 41votes it's very old one) and it's about Mozart!! No one thinks Beethoven is actually Austrian.
I am just shocked that no one noticed and I consider myself musically inept.
Below it's a wikipedia quote:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) and Anna Maria, née Pertl (1720–1778), at 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, a former ecclesiastical principality in what is now Austria, but then was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
@majarambuz
The House of Habsburg rule ends in 1740, Mozart is born in 1756...
Francis I was emperor at that time (1756) and he was mostly French.
The point was about Beethoven considered Austrian, he was born in Bonn and I know no single person who thinks Beethoven is Austrian (unlike Mozart).
So, a chatty Sky support rep makes a jokey but slightly dodgy cultural reference in a private chat to a customer and the humorless Reg-reading customer immediately publicizes it, no doubt resulting in the punishment and/or sacking of said Sky rep.
Frankly I'd've expected better of a Reg reader, but, as I say in the title, they should fit in perfectly in Germany.
"It might be jokey and slightly dodgy if you know the person in question. This advisor didn't so its out of order."
Which country is Sky support based in? If it's outside Europe, the cultural insensitivity might be more forgivable.
One could argue that the employees are paid to deal with UK customers regardless of where they're based, but realistically, *if* this was an outsourced job, it'd be pretty dickish to blame some poor low-wage sod who was employed due to his country's lower wages and made an ill-judged comment without quite realising some people would find it offensive.
Hehe. Getting downvoted for suggesting the Germans lack a sense of humour! Who knew that Reg readers were so politically correct! :-)
I remember telling a German girl the following joke:
Q: How many mice does it take to screw in a light-bulb?
A: Two
And she thought it funny due to the mice having little paws - I then had to explain that in English the word screw had another meaning. :-)
She was disappointed.
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We were not much better when we had an empire - we just only did it to the "colonials", so no-one in the UK noticed. Its amazing how many Brits think the Empire was a paragon of ethics & brought wonderful British values to the rest of the world. We succeeded where the Nazis failed because we did it slow & clever rather than blitzkrieging all over the shop.
Thank fuck karma is an imaginary religious construct - if it wasn't we'd be bang in trouble now. Not for nothing does half the world think that the Illuminati are British :-)
And as a character-based anecdote-
I once mortally offended a German airport official by hanging out too long in the Bakery in the airport in Hannover ... and turning up only 5 mins before flight thus causing a string of events such as baggage unloading-reloading, the poor fellow having to accept that logically I was actually there and that he had to let me on my flight, and the smallish regional jet taking off like a missile with the nose pointed very much skywards at max acceleration with people holding on tight, so it could make up a couple of minutes on a short hop so as not to delay Lufthansa''s rather fussy business customers!
So, sorry Germans, plus, hey, it was fun.
On my first visit to Germany a few years ago, I flew into Dusseldorf to catch a train to Essen. DeutscheBahn did their best to make me feel at home, producing a train that was slow, dirty and late. The Ruhr river looked like a country brook. Essen was fascinating, practically every building in the city centre had been destroyed by allied bombing during the (don't mention), except for Mr. Krupp's factory which they'd somehow missed and had since been converted into a branch of Ikea. Wandering around the city on Saturday afternoon (all the shops closed at 4 o'clock) I found myself looking at a row of little Swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler - I thought the philatelist's shop could have chosen it's window display more carefully.
" I found myself looking at a row of little Swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler - I thought the philatelist's shop could have chosen it's window display more carefully."
F'nar, f'nar.
I had not realized Germany had repealed the law on Nazi symbols and memorabilia. Tricky given the swastika is a sacred symbol to IIRC 3 religions.
I once mortally offended a German airport official by hanging out too long in the Bakery…
You mean you arrived after the gate had closed? Then they don't have to let you on at all. And being punctual has as much to do with not paying fines on missing start times as it does with keeping business class customers sweet. My guess is that you were lucky being in Hannover which is a small and, therefore, more flexible airport.
If the gate wasn't closed, they wouldn't have offloaded your luggauge. BUM (Baggage Unload Message) should only be issued from DCS once the airline has closed the flight I.e. the gate is closed.
So, either the story you tell is being "massaged" or something VERY non-industry standard is being actioned.
My shit got kicked off the plane in Hamburg for being 3 minutes late from the Diners lounge. The Luftwaffe chick at the gate obviously had Colonel Rosa Klebb as her private role model for friendly tolerance.
When rebooking the flight my boss inflated himself to his full importance and threatened the check-in woman with the: "Do yo think I will ever use your airline again?"-speech. Which caused a genuine full-on smile: "You will have to sir, we are the only airline servicing that route".
*That* was fun - And he had to pay through the nose for rooms at the SAS-radisson hotel across the street from the airport as well - because it was HE who absolutely had to go to the toilet on the way to the gate.
You will have to sir, we are the only airline servicing that route
Love it. You should see how some people treat service personnel. To me, that is a sign of very bad manners so I'm glad she had a nice comeback. Ditto for stewardesses, you should see some of the crap they have to put up with.
On the flip side, if I *do* treat people like human beings I have the expectation to be treated the same. I once was on an emergency diversion from London City to Stansted (you know, the home of Ryanair) do to hydraulics issues, and I raised merry hell there with the company that was supposed to take care of by then fairly traumatises passengers. If you would treat cattle that way you'd be arrested, and this party had kids and elderly people in trauma condition. It wasn't the fault of the people on the ground - their management just left them hanging without any instructions or resources.
All is well that ends well - they lost the emergency handling contract that very evening.
To me, that is a sign of very bad manners so I'm glad she had a nice comeback.
It is stupid too. The humble customer service person is authorised, on their sole discretion, to pay up to EUR 700 to cover the inconvenience one might have by the luggage not arriving on time, f.ex. Why piss them off?
My daughter got 200 EUR for clothes in Paris from Air France, on a budget flight! I got a decent pair of trousers, jacket, tie and a shirt from BA because they lost my luggage on a morning flight and I had a meeting.
Sometimes the service staff take revenge: One bloke in Copenhagen was really bollocking the check-in girl over some problem with the required special handling of his excessive amount of stupid designer-luggage, 20 minutes we had to wait in line behind this c*nt. FINALLY - his luggage goes on the transport, the guy turns around, a luggage handler emerges from the nether regions, pick up his stuff and trows it onto several trolleys ... bound for bomb-disposal training in West Africa, one assumes. Everybody saw it, nobody said anything ;)
> Why piss them off?
Too true. I was waiting in Denver baggage reclaim when I heard myself being paged. I went to the designated agent, and with a smile and my best "resigned, but light-hearted" tone said "I'll bet you're going to tell me my baggage missed the connection?" It wasn't his fault that Heathrow had screwed up, and he was visibly so pleased that I wasn't going to be bolshie that I got twice the number of AmEx vouchers that the more difficult passengers did.
Munich, late 90s, was travelling on a train from Nurenburg when I realised I'd screwed up the times and was going to be late, the train appeared to be most of the way there so I held some hope that we might arrive early, but German trains arrive at their stations at the exact second specified on the schedule or the driver and anyone else responsible are whisked away to a labour camp or something.
Anyway, they were suprised to see me at the closed gate, but I was ushered down to the tarmac and into a small car that screamed across the airport to my plane, idling at the end of the runway, patiently awaiting it's most slovenly bastard.
You obviously have no idea the effect late pax have on a flight.
No, "he" did not have to let you board the plane. If the boarding gate is closed, its up to the pilot to decide to allow you to board an no one else, and thats only after its got passed the ground handler.
Delaying a flight is very little to do with not upsetting business class passengers. Its about people making connecting flights, its about airlines being charged for late departures and its about airlines being charged for late arrivals. And at a big airport like LHR or LGW, missing your slot can cause significant delays.
Try your attitude at a UK airport and you may well get a VERY diferent response. You only have to watch a few "Come Fly With Me" episodes to work that out.
Still, as long you had fun eh?
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.. When I phoned them to tell them I was leaving I was told that I was "Cutting off my own nose to spite my face".
Nowhere near as bad as what's being reported here but given that Murdoch just called Charlotte Church, former Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames and actor Hugh Grant."scumbag celebrities" I guess being offensive is just second nature to people in Sky.
When working in customer support, always think of the worst possible response you could get before saying something.
Because if the guy on the other end had been German (i.e. moving back home), or Jewish, or was the EU minister for racial relations or whatever, it was never going to end well.
I predict someone only got a slap on the wrist and a harsh word, but it could result in you being sacked. Maybe that's what the guy was after - I know a few people who work in customer support who like to "go out with a bang" when they go, even if it ends up costing them their last month's wages.
Is it just me, or does that Sky Rep fail the Turing test? His responses sound very much like ELIZA or PARRY.
It's more likely of course that English is a second language for him, (which with a name like Abbas seems likely,) and that could be why he was not aware of the emotional baggage associated with Hitler. After all, you don't need to teach sales drones about European history in order to up-sell Sky Movies.
Agree, people who mostly read from a script often appear to be candidates for failing the Turing test.
It''s like people who have obviously gone on touch-feely courses asking "where did you go on holiday" answer - "I don''t do "holiday", I'm in IT" ;) or "what did you do at the weekend" - answer, "nunya" and "you don''t want to know, mate" :P
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"If I remember correctly, it was once Hitlers country.."
So? This was once Cromwell's country, should everyone living here be blamed for a nasty military dictator long in the past?
And if you want to disparage people based on the actions of their government there's another country that goes round invading and occupying countries that have not threatened them in any way. Much more recently than 1945. Hint: It's not due East of here.
"So? This was once Cromwell's country, should everyone living here be blamed for a nasty military dictator long in the past?"
Yes, but are they? To this day I am still amazed by the brilliant PR machine that the Germans employed post WWII. It wasn't the Germans that did all those nasty things during WWII, oh no, it was the Nazis, or better yet the SS or the Gestapo. The Germans were just as much victims as anyone, apparently, victims of the evil Nazis. Every film, TV series, book and video game calls the Germans from 1933-1945 - Nazis, as if they were entirely different race to the indigenous Germans. The Germans managed, somehow, to extricate their name and race from all those abominable acts, and offer up another patsy - a political party.
One wonders if, in another 100 years the history books will record Hitler as having been born in Naziland and annexing Germany first, completely removing the Germans of all culpability.
It's a shame for the Japanese that they didn't have a PR man of Germany's calibre post WWII. All the heinous acts of WWII committed in the East, were simply committed by the Japs. I find that disparity somewhat troubling.
So given the choice of being shot for ignoring your call up papers or being given a gun and a chance of coming out the other end alive you'd choose to be shot? You cannot blame the people when a country goes to war. It's usually the politicians who are to blame. If ever there is a war with politicians and their families on the front line leading the battle then I might consider a war just. Whenever Bush or Blair went to Afghanistan, for their safety, it was not reported until they had returned to the comfort of their gin palaces. Did these two not consider the safety of the soldiers they were possibly condeming to death in order to puff their own self esteem?
" If ever there is a war with politicians and their families on the front line leading the battle then I might consider a war just. " The last British Head of State to lead hi troops into battle was, of course, George II at the battle of Dettingen. Presunably the Brits won the battle, hence Handel's Dettingen Te Deum.
Quite right. And Bomber Harris destroyed all those cities full of civilians single handed. We have a memorial to Bomber Command.
Even though it turns out that, not only was precision bombing with Mosquitos far more effective (about 6 times in terms of military effectiveness per £ spent) and safer for crews and civilians, but the statisticians knew perfectly well that the mass bombing campaign was hideously inaccurate and rather ineffective. One reason this country was so poor post-WW2 was that we spent so much money and resources on heavy bombers.
Pot meet kettle.
...To this day I am still amazed by the brilliant PR machine that the Germans employed post WWII. It wasn't the Germans that did all those nasty things during WWII, oh no, it was the Nazis, or better yet the SS or the Gestapo. The Germans were just as much victims as anyone, apparently, victims of the evil Nazis...
Ummm... I hate to enlighten you about this, but that PR trick was dreamed up and implemented by the Allies.
At the end of WW1 we stuffed the Germans. 20 years later they went for a rematch. So at the end of WW2 the one lesson we had learned was - 'don't stuff the country'. But the French still wanted someone to blame. So we made up the story that it was all the bad Nazis fault and ran a program of de-nazification. The idea was to treat the Germans well so that they didn't look for 'best of three'.
In fact, the main thing that stopped the Germans starting up again was having their country split in two and half occupied by Russia. I note that it has been about 20 years since German reunification, and with the Euro collapse it looks as if they are well on their way to a third attempt at European Hegemony...
"The German government has announced its decision to raise the aid it gives to Holocaust survivors. The reparation amounts for 2011 will stand at 110 million Euros per year, up from 55 million Euros in 2010."
Can you imagine American or English children agreeing to be taxed to pay reparations 65 years after the crimes committed by their parents?
Not likely.
... Presumably an inquiry to determine how the conversation could possibly have got this far without the customer being told that packages can't be cancelled or downgraded via any medium as customer-convenient as Live Chat.
The customer should already have been told by this point that "for his convenience" he needs to call back, and in a queue for 45 minutes, being pushed from pillar to post.
Outrageous!
If I were sad enough to have such a thing, that Fucking page would be my favourite page on Wikipedia:
"The Germans all want to see Mozart's house in Salzburg; the Americans want to see where The Sound of Music was filmed; the Japanese want Hitler's birthplace in Braunau; but for the British, it's all about Fucking."
"Everyone here knows what it means in English, but for us Fucking is Fucking — and it's going to stay Fucking."
Although the Germans are serious contenders in the places-with-funny-names competition by having a mountain called Wank where you can stay in the Wank-Haus, ride the Wankbahn, and you can also get yearly Wankpass. They also get bonus points for, at the top of Wank, being able to see the whole of the Zugspitze and the Wetterstein.
Yeah, I used to read Viz far too much! Fnarr Fnarr
"Abbas" is very probably young, Indian & working in a call center in Hyderabad or Bangalore or somewhere - a very different country with a different culture from Europe.
As was evinced by the recent clothing emporium called "Hitler":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19433343
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19481400
There, all the name carries is a vague implication of someone very strict, apparently.
He has quite possibly heard of the story of the clothes shop and does not realise, any more than the shopkeeper, what implications the name carries.
This is no worse than many a Brit thinking that "Mahatma" was Ganhi's first or given name, or not having a clue who Rabindranath Tagore was.
After going a few rounds with Vermin Media Retentions department, who tried to tell me that, among other things, Elf N Safety forbid fibre to the home(!) and ADSL can't be cheaper than £1 per Gbyte, I'd say this guy got off lightly.
Glad to hear it's possible to cancel via the online chat system, though, rather than paying for an 0844 or 0871 scam number - about time too.
Well my temperature's a bit elevated, and I've been sneezing, so I might have a cold coming on. I'm also a bit tired. But at least I've just had a nice poo, so I'm feeling light on my feet, and ready to face lunch. On the other hand, I could do with a haircut and a good manicure. My family are all doing well, but a few of my friends have been pissing me off lately. My wife done gone an' left me, my dog up an' died, my only remainin' friends are my guitar and this bottle of whisky.
Other than that, not too bad. How about you?
It might be pertinent to know that Mein Kampf sells like hot cakes in India, where people, (with no sense of apparent irony), make remarks like, 'Hitler is an inspirational historical figure'.
http://rt.com/news/mein-kampf-sales-india/
I'm almost certain that yes, Sky has outsourced their support to India and that Abbas is unaware that calling Germany 'Hitler's country' was anything other than a statement of fact.
It's certainly an interesting lesson in where people choose to take their offences and why the argument that, 'the PC brigade is out of control', is a difficult one to make. If you cause someone to take offence, you have offended them, whether you intended to or not. The extent to which this can be prevented as opposed to apologised for is arguable, but that's what cultural sensitivity is supposed to be about.
but when we had Sky in the late 90's the picture used to intermittently go off in heavy rain or wind replaced by a "please wait" screen. Even NTL were better than that.
Got Virgin now, & I know some people have nightmares with them, but they've been 100% with us (probably down to luck) & they certainly keep boosting the net speed. Pay for Sky Sport still as there's a terminal football addict in the house, though I hate giving Murdoch anything. I wouldn't give him the steam off my piss if it was up to me.
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