Come Over Dere

You know how when they're training call centre staff, some of the incomings get taped?

Someone sent Riki this crazy conversation, it got onto the internet somehow, this Samoan whose mother's luggage has been lost, and he's going off completely, he's completely lost it, he's yelling at this poor woman, and she's trying to explain, staying desperately polite: she's saying to him, But, sir, this is not the airport, sir, we can't trace your luggage from here, this is a call centre, sir, what you need to do is—

And this guy's just yelling, getting more and more violent, screaming, I'm gonna come over dere, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna come over dere and slap you round, you want me to come over dere and sort you out, I'm gonna—

All of them do spirited and noisy imitations of this man (all of them

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have the cruelly accurate musician's ear for voices, accent, inflection, intonation). What's curious is what gradually happens to the phrase Come over dere, as in its repetition the anecdote is whittled down, reduced to its pith. What it comes to mean is the very opposite of threatening. Come over dere, they'll say, meaning: Come here to us, come play, come join in. Come over dere. Meaning: we understand each other, we operate the same way, we speak the same language, do we not?