Do you know what, there is no excuse for rudeness and if you make a formal complaint, as others have said, they will be able to listen to the call and that person will be dealt with. However, I do take issue with the way people spout about ‘nasty training’ (obviously not) Also the ‘I pay your wages’ mentality (is that so?). It will probably make me very unpopular and I’m not suggesting for one minute that this is the case in gillybobs example, but in my experience a lot of people interpret what they are told as rude if it’s not what they want to hear. I work in government and part of my role is investigating complaints. I spend a lot of time listening back to phone calls where staff are accused of rudeness. A lot of our callers owe a lot of money. That is why they are calling and that’s great, that is our job and we are there to help people out with advice, applying for benefits, making payment plans etc. Mostly it goes well as the staff are well trained and happy to help. Some people haven’t made payments for years, but they state that they are ‘paying our wages?’ It’s ironic as I can say for certain my team are all paying their taxes - and under that logic are therefore paying their own wages. Many of our callers are not paying their contributions (hence the letters they are calling about) so actually they are not paying anyone’s wages. The ‘I pay your wages’ statement also generally follows a load of abuse due to the operator being unable to give the caller what they want. Namely, to let them pay what they want when they want, or frequently, nothing at all. You can’t run a country like that. People are so quick to criticise. There are human beings on both ends of the phone. If the operators can only offer you limited options it’s because they are the rules, the laws and the procedures, not because they are nasty. There is no excuse for rudeness, but some situations are not easy or pleasant to deal with for either party. Rant over, but we have no redress and it’s unfair that people casually slag off civil servants and tar us all with the same brush.