"computer says no" meaning in English

See computer says no in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Etymology: From the British sketch comedy series Little Britain, where it was the catchphrase of the character Carol Beer, a bank worker and later holiday rep and hospital receptionist, who dealt with customer enquiries by typing them into her computer and responding with "computer says no". Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} computer says no
  1. (humorous) Alluding to an attitude in customer service in which the default response is to check with information stored or generated electronically and then make decisions based on that, apparently without using common sense and without any desire to help the customer. Wikipedia link: Computer says no, Little Britain Tags: humorous Related terms: jobsworth, officialism, Kafkaesque Translations (popular phrase for an attitude in customer service): computer zegt nee (Dutch), компьютер говорит нет (kompʹjuter govorit net) (Russian)

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{
  "etymology_text": "From the British sketch comedy series Little Britain, where it was the catchphrase of the character Carol Beer, a bank worker and later holiday rep and hospital receptionist, who dealt with customer enquiries by typing them into her computer and responding with \"computer says no\".",
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        "Alluding to an attitude in customer service in which the default response is to check with information stored or generated electronically and then make decisions based on that, apparently without using common sense and without any desire to help the customer."
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      "id": "en-computer_says_no-en-phrase-jQfpKEhJ",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) Alluding to an attitude in customer service in which the default response is to check with information stored or generated electronically and then make decisions based on that, apparently without using common sense and without any desire to help the customer."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "jobsworth"
        },
        {
          "word": "officialism"
        },
        {
          "word": "Kafkaesque"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "humorous"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "popular phrase for an attitude in customer service",
          "word": "computer zegt nee"
        },
        {
          "code": "ru",
          "lang": "Russian",
          "roman": "kompʹjuter govorit net",
          "sense": "popular phrase for an attitude in customer service",
          "word": "компьютер говорит нет"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Computer says no",
        "Little Britain"
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  "word": "computer says no"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From the British sketch comedy series Little Britain, where it was the catchphrase of the character Carol Beer, a bank worker and later holiday rep and hospital receptionist, who dealt with customer enquiries by typing them into her computer and responding with \"computer says no\".",
  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
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      "word": "officialism"
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    {
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      "glosses": [
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      ],
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous) Alluding to an attitude in customer service in which the default response is to check with information stored or generated electronically and then make decisions based on that, apparently without using common sense and without any desire to help the customer."
      ],
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        "humorous"
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  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "popular phrase for an attitude in customer service",
      "word": "computer zegt nee"
    },
    {
      "code": "ru",
      "lang": "Russian",
      "roman": "kompʹjuter govorit net",
      "sense": "popular phrase for an attitude in customer service",
      "word": "компьютер говорит нет"
    }
  ],
  "word": "computer says no"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.