My Mate Is The Train Door Man

[Bribie G]

Gotta share this: Had a massive surprise today - you may know that I work in a large inbound Customer Service centre for VHA (Vodafone Hutchison Australia) and there's a guy about my age I've been working with for a few years and we are buddies in a work sense but nothing social. He has the most rich dark brown Shakespearian voice, and I ended up sitting next to him. His name's Will.

Now all Brisbanites will know that before the doors close on trains here, there is an announcement "Doors closing, please stand clear". And I said "Will, do you know you sound exactly like a train door about to close" "Yup, that's me" It was a gig he did about 12 years ago but since then he is in lifts in hospitals all over the country, and was recently flown down to Qantas and will be one of the voices on the Airbus 380s etc. I'm green with envy, but you just have to hear this guy, it's like swimming in an ocean of oatmeal stout He's quite a private guy and doesn't talk much about his moonlighting job as Mr Rentavoice.

Will, coming to a lift, train or plane near you soon :icon_cheers:

And no he doesn't get a royalty every time the train door closes. Hahahah

 

[InCider]

Hey Bribie, do you think he could do a piece for the swap? Got a script ready to go:

'... the swap beer standing in TidalPete's wooden box will shortly be departing for a milkcrate'

 

[Bribie G]

Pete farting, please stand clear

 

[petesbrew]

Get him to record a few sound files on your phone.
eg, "Bribie's got a new sms. **** yeah."

 

[Cube]

Must be the last two call centre people in Aussie left Bribie. All I get is a punjub accent. Last 3 hutch call I made ( two weeks ago ) to cancel my mobile internet account and I had to tell the indian woman to SLOW DOWN and talk clearly because I couldn't understand her at all. I'm serious, she rabbled on for a minute before I gave in and said sorry, you are speaking jibberish please speak slowly and clearly. Imagine that voice on a train.....

 

[Shed101]

Must be the last two call centre people in Aussie left Bribie. All I get is a punjub accent. Last 3 hutch call I made ( two weeks ago ) to cancel my mobile internet account and I had to tell the indian woman to SLOW DOWN and talk clearly because I couldn't understand her at all. I'm serious, she rabbled on for a minute before I gave in and said sorry, you are speaking jibberish please speak slowly and clearly. Imagine that voice on a train.....

You sure it wasn't ?

 

[Bribie G]

:lol:

There will be a move to return call centres to Australia because of declining Indian language skills, and a perception that talking to an Aussie on the phone is a premium service. Since February this year we have taken on a premium directory assistance service here in Bris, and people will actually pay more to speak to us than to the Phillipines for the vanilla DA service, plus we are allowed to do more for them, e.g. SMS web addresses to their phone, give them directions etc etc. This service will soon be extended to 3 as well.
I believe that Virgin in the UK outsourced to India but then took it back as the customers were getting pissed off.

Problem with India is that they speak a version of English left over from the Empire and this is a lingua franca between themselves, and has developed into a pidgin (check out Bollywood .... "arara hamara halla waka he should be ashamed of his jolly self and nagara hawa" ......etc .. made up the Bengali but you know what I mean. It's called code switching and the Filipinos do it as well. So they are convinced they are talking acceptable English but we know better.

I once tried to teach an Indian how to say "what do you want" instead of Vat do you VAnt. I made him stick a pencil in between his lips to practice his "W" without using his teeth. That went fine. Ok, I said, now say what do you want.

Vat to you VAnt.

I gave up