1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 5:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is always refreshing.
2. If it's really a "rush job," run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it's going. That greatly aids my efficiency.
3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.
4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books or supplies, don't open the door for me. I might need to learn how to function as a paraplegic in future and opening doors is good training.
5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is the priority. Let me guess.
6. Do your best to keep me late. I like the office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do.
7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. Leaks like that could get me a promotion.
8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversations.
9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. If fact, save them until the job is almost done.
10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.
11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change your life.
12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone is less fortunate.

"Dear Cretins:

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm monitoring. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative and seek to rectify these difficulties or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was canceled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.

The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools -- such as a drill-bit and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over four weeks my modem arrived, six weeks after I had requested it -- and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35% -- the hours between about 6 PM and midnight, Monday through Friday and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection.

I have made nine calls on my mobile to your no-help line and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals who are, it seems, also highly skilled bollock jugglers. I have been informed that: a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answering machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman, and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore. Frankly I don't care. It's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue. I thought British Telecom was crap; that they had attained the holy-pot of god-awful customer relations; and that no one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NT and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum, incompetents of the highest order.

BT -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief and will quickly be replaced by derision and even perhaps bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit -- they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day. May it be the last in your miserable short lives, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twits.

May you rot in Hell,

Robert Stokes"

Submitted by Larry, Walkersville, Md.

Satan was complaining bitterly to God, "You made the world so that it was not fair, and you made it so that most people would have to struggle every day, fight against their innate wishes and desires, and deal with all sorts of losses, grief, disasters, and catastrophes. Yet people worship and adore you. People fight, get arrested, and cheat each other, and I get blamed, even when it is not my fault. Sure, I'm evil, but give me a break. Can't you do something to make them stop blaming me?"

And so God created lawyers.