Jobsworth on the line

SIR – My telephone line is out of order. Across the road an engineer is working on the junction box of my phone. I’ll just ask him to fix it.

“A wire must have come loose,” he says. I agree. “Can you reconnect it?” I ask. “Only if instructed to do so by my supervisor,” he says.

I ask him to inform his supervisor, but he says that I have to report the fault by phone.

I speak to a lady in India. She will report the fault to a person in Britain. They will tell an engineer to go and put the wire back in the socket.

Is this how a company in the 21st century deals with something so simple?

William Howells

Willington, Derbyshire