Thanks for calling Airhitch, you jerk. How may I direct your pointless call?

The travel site Gridskipper has an absolutely beautiful post today about customer service. I can't do it justice here and won't try, except to say that it includes a transcript of an IM session between a client of air-travel consolidator Airhitch and a customer-service rep. Due diligence requires that I note this: The whole thing could be a fraud. But in the memorable formulation of Newsweek when it was caught out on the Hitler Diaries, "Genuine or not, it almost doesn't matter in the end." What's thrilling about the exchange, and what makes it valuable whether it's real or a prank by some kid with time on his hands, is that it strips away the very, very thin veneer of civility to reveal the true dynamic inherent in customer service: The companies hate us and want us to go away and quit bothering them. They pretend they don't as a last vestige of the corporate best practices that used to be in vogue a hundred years ago; we pretend they don't because we have no choice but to take our sad little problems to them, and it's humiliating. This calculus has never been so richly and thoroughly explicated as it is here. So in the event that "airhitch20" is a real person in the employ of what sounds like one nutty outfit to work for: Sir, thank you. You have eliminated a substantial portion of hypocrisy from the client/company relationship. And in that spirit, let me add this: Go f**k yourself. There. Don't we all feel better now?