It's not that the 'phonetic alphabet' make any sense either though.
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
1205 points (99.3% liked)
Microblog Memes
7371 readers
1568 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Q for queue
Q-cumber looks like a name for a tech startup which name was chosen as a bet or something like that.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I used to have to be on the phones A LOT, and when I was requested to do this I would use the "Pasta Phoenetic" alphabet. You wouldn't believe how many different types of pasta there is!
load more comments
(2 replies)
Hawaiian comedian Frank De Lima told a joke about a Filipino announcer saying somebody needed to move their car, license plate B for Bictory, L for Elephant, Q for Cucumberrrrrrr...
A few months ago I expended the effort and learned that goddamn alphabet. Guess what? Haven’t needed it since. All gone.
I learnt it to work in a call centre ten years ago and can still remember them all with a bit of effort, but I still don't know the Dutch one, which is more likely to come in handy now and is all people's names.
It's useful when you're talking to somebody on a bad line who doesn't really understand English all that well. Such as when you're trying to cancel your ISP, because they are always in India.
Count your blessings, sucks having to get on the phone and play the spelling game
I love using animals when I do this.
How do you make the animals speak ?
Text often leaves out subtle nuance. In this case, imagine op making a hand gesture something like shaking ketchup out of a bottle.
Pretty much exactly this.
“K for knight, P for pterodactyl, G for gnome”
There's a World's Worst Alphabet Book that has those.
I personally like the words that sound like other letters: A as in Aye, E as in Eye, S as in See.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Easy. A is for apple B is for bapple C is for capple ...
I'm all about that NATO phonetic alphabet - which for some reason rubs certain people answering phones the wrong way.
Can't say I don't have a couple substitutions, though (Zebra instead of Zulu, Sam instead of Sierra, Frank instead of Foxtrot), but it's not like I'm working the radio of an aircraft or something.
The NATO phonetic alphabet does make some intersting choices. Sierra being particularly bad because over a poor quality radio it can sound a lot like "zero." the WWII American phonetic alphabet used "sugar." Able Baker indeed.
I once said Sierra and the guy wrote the letter C, because apparently he might be a physicist, but he was also an idiot
TBH "Sierra" is a pretty obscure word. I didn't know about it until the Mac OS release with that name. And given how often "c" makes an "s" sound, that sounds like a reasonable mistake to make if you've never heard the word before.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sam and Frank are quite similar
Unrecognisable letter - a - m or n, very similar - unrecognisable could be both (say when it's loud and you're talking)
Sierra and Foxtrot are very different and that's what matters
Understood, but these were selected based on what seems to work for your average customer service person/office worker. The amount of times I've said 'Sierra' and got back C is too many.
Might re-think Frank over Foxtrot, though. That's more habit than anything else.
Agreed in other contexts these are not the best choices, and there's a reason they are not that in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Bam, Cam, Dam, Fam, Ham, Jam, Lam(b), Ma'am, Pam, Ram, W(h)am
Bank, Dank, Gank, Hank, Jank, Lank, Rank, Sank, Tank, Wank
Yeah.. not great options, those.
Bam, Cam, Dam, Fam, Ham, Jam, Lam(b), Ma'am, Pam, Ram, W(h)am
Whoa, Black Betty!
Bramble jam??
Years ago I was on the phone with an airline agent and I had to read out my verification number. When I came to the letter V my brain short circuited and the only word I could think of was "vagina". I sat there in a panic for probably about 10 seconds going "uhhh... uhhh..." before I finally remembered the word "valentine".
"R" as in "Robert Loggia"
Literally always what I think of!
"O" as in "Oh my god it's Robert Loggia!"