"Is there anything else I can do for you today?"

For reasons that escape me, corporate America has embraced yet another bit of tomfoolery. Now it has become a help-center phenomenon.

If you’ve called almost any large retail chain, credit-card issuer or other business behemoth lately with a complaint or a problem, you'll know what I’m talking about as soon as I give you a couple of examples.

Several weeks ago, my wife Liz returned a call from the fraud unit at the firm that issued one of our credit cards. The company wanted to know if we had charged an unusually large purchase. We had not, so the credit-card issuer chalked up the purchase as fraudulent, canceled our credit card and promised to issue a new one.

Problem solved. Liz was about to hang up. But the conversation wasn’t over just yet. The woman on the other end of the line had to add this superfluous parting question: “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Um, no, there isn’t. We were returning your call, remember?

Fast forward to last week, when I called a major retailer to report that it looked like a gift card I had used online had not been applied to my order. The woman on the help desk checked the order and explained that the gift card had been used, despite a misleading e-mail from the company indicating otherwise.

Problem solved. But once again, the conversation wasn’t over just yet. This time, too, the woman at the other end of the line tacked on that pointless parting question: “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Um, no, there isn’t. Why would there be?

Isn’t it obvious to these companies that, once a caller’s problem has been resolved, there's no reason to continue the conversation? This little addendum of theirs is not a spontaneous effort to be helpful. These folks are posing this question with predictable uniformity because it's part of a carefully rehearsed script, and a (mildly) irritating one at that.

Maybe the next time this happens I should respond by saying: “Why yes, there is something else you can do for me today. Thanks for asking. I’d like an everything bagel with cream cheese, please. Oh, and a medium tea. I'll be out on the sunporch when the food is ready.”