I believe that may be the very guy that I talked to the last time I was forced to call for tech support. That is why I have opted to go with the text chat support otpion since then. It takes considerably longer to get each response, but since you don't have to get them to repeat it three or four times it actually cuts back on time.

Interesting note on the people that work at those call centers is that if you don't understand them the first time, they will repeat it much louder -a lot like an American just yelling at foreign people in English- but no matter how loud they say it, I can never figure out what he is trying to ask when he says "Have you tried to catfish lampshade?"

 

The lecturer I had for my linguistics course mentioned that briefly.

She said that often when speaking to older people/foreign people, who don't understand you the first time, most people start talking louder and slower, however this actually makes it harder for them to understand you because you're not speaking naturally.

It was especially frustrating to me at my old job, this stupid cow of a woman who worked in the clothing department and SOMEHOW pulled a ninja on the management and got put in charge of music (out of the 5 people going for the job, she was the least sensible pick). Whenever she was talking to an older person who didn't understand her, she'd get really loud and really slow and patronising, it was aweful. I just wanted to slap her and tell her to stop talking down to everyone. Stupid cow.

 

On the last season of the Amazing Race, one dumb guy on the "frat boys" team said one smart thing all year. They were in Japan and struggling to make themselves understood with even the most basic place names, and he said what donnie says. That the trick is to speak really quickly and the let the syllables jumble together, which is how Japanese people say the names in their own language.

"nagasaki" as quickly as you can sound it out. Not "Na-ga-sak-ee." as the foreigners were doing. The problem, of course, is that the locals would reply at the same speed.