h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I man the phones all day, and people should spell their names this way-- it sure beats "Was that V or P?"

Same here.. I'm on the phone and the phonetic alphabets are very useful.
Then again, we get calls from a lot of peple who doesn't get the phonetic alphabet at all.

"So, your reference code for this case is Oh-One-Sierra-Romeo-Three-Victor-Lima."
"What? Oh-one zero (O10)?"
"No, it's Zero-One. S for Sierra."
"Zero One S Four Zero?"
"Ehh.. No. It's The number Zero. The number One. The letter S as is Sierra or Singapore, or Stupid!"
"So what happened to the four?"

I don't want to stereotype a fifth of the world population, but those conversations almost always breaks out when there's a Chinese student calling from Sweden. Their English is apalling to begin with, and then you can sit for five or ten minutes trying to get them to write down a seven digit reference number.

One good thing, though is that Swedish customers know the Swedish phonetic alphabet and knows (mostly) what you say when giving them a reference code phonetically.
However, you can hear some interesting usages when they try to read a serial number of a machine.
I can't give any examples, though, as it just wouldn't work in English.

Cool. Yeah, I did the unedited entry, and I use the alphabet in the Sea Cadets. It used to have what each of the letters meant in sea faring terminology, like Bravo is I am taking in or carrying or discharging dangerous goods, but I had to take them off