Memo to Call Centers in India

This is to alert you that call volumes will be down on Friday. It is the 4th of July.  You may not even have many calls on Thursday. Why?  It is Independence Day in the United States and Americans celebrate early and long....particularly if a three day time off period is available.

Instead of taking out verbal pyrotechnics  on you because of the foibles of company products and services  which  you represent (and are trying to defend),  Americans will, for a short time,  be throwing real fire crackers and lighting sparklers.

All this is fine and good but the real problem is how should you spend your time when the volume of calls are down.  Here is our recommendation:  Study English!  We should be more specific study American English.

To help you with this effort we have assembled a number of American words along with their English (UK) counterparts---the first row being American:

Affirmative Action vs. positive discrimination

Airplane vs. fixed wing aircraft

Blood sausage vs. black pudding

Bobby pin vs. hair grip

Booger vs. bogey

Buddy vs. mate

Cellphone vs. mobile

Counterclockwise vs. anti-clockwise

Doohickey vs. wotsit

Duct tape vs. gafter tape

Dude vs. bloke

Flashlight vs. torch

Freshman vs. fresher

Garbage vs. rubbish

Green thumb vs. green fingers

Half-bath vs. WC

Play hookey vs. bunk off

Mom vs. mum

Mono vs. glandular fever

Overpass vs flyover

Stool pigeon vs. grasser

Trash can vs. dust bin

Undershirt vs. singlet

Windshield vs. windscreen

Y'all vs. youse

Popsicle vs. ice jolly

Plumber's crack vs. Builder's bum 

This will get you started. There will be a test on Monday.