How Can We Insult You Into Dumping Our Company Today?
Yoohoo...Time-Warner, your customerservicespeak, "To whom do I have the honor of assisting?" comes off as condescending bullshit it is.

How Can We Insult You Into Dumping Our Company Today?
Yoohoo...Time-Warner, your customerservicespeak, "To whom do I have the honor of assisting?" comes off as condescending bullshit it is.
There is a whole plague of stuff like this, perpetrated by companies of all sizes and equally by non-business organizations. See my post mindless verbal Taylorism.
david foster at May 16, 2011 7:18 AM
Exactly, David. Great example.
Amy Alkon at May 16, 2011 7:20 AM
Expanded post at Chicago Boyz is great, too:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/8034.html
And how cool that you're one of the Chicago Boys...thanks for reminding me of that site. Have to put in my RSS reader.
Amy Alkon at May 16, 2011 7:22 AM
Their pretentious phrasing is also ungrammatical. The "to" at the beginning of the sentence is unnecessary.
Christopher at May 16, 2011 8:58 AM
Christopher is correct. The verb 'assist' takes a direct object, so in this case the preposition is not required. In English, we use the subject pronoun 'who' as the nominative and the object pronoun 'whom' for both accusative and ablative constructions; that is when the pronoun is the object of a verb or preposition.
Examples:
1. "Whom do I have the honor of assisting?" Whom is used as the direct object of the verb 'assist'.
2. "To whom can I complain about Time-Warner abusing our language?" Whom is used here as the object of the preposition, not the verb.
Grammar Partisan at May 16, 2011 9:09 AM
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