Inverted Turing test?

Caught this in passing on TV last night, civil servants being told to pretend to be answering machines when people rang up. I could feel the swearwords rising when they mentioned that it was actually in Britain, at which point most of the swearwords went off for a lie down and I think all I said was 'hmph, not fucking surprised'. And what was this arse backwards Turing test in aid of? To hide the fact that they were unable to cope because of strike action.

UK civil servants left behind during strike action claim they were ordered to pretend they were telephone answering machines to ease their workload.

One worker said staff were instructed to tell callers: "Due to the high volume of enquiries we are currently experiencing we are unable to take your call. Please call back later."

They then had to hang up.

Workers at the Department for Work and Pensions in Carlisle said they were given the orders during a two-day national strike organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union.

The claims have been widely discussed on Facebook.

The union said 200,000 public sector employees walked out yesterday.

The worker said DWP bosses issued instructions that workers should pose as an automated answering service between noon and 2pm, their busiest time of day.

Makes me fucking proud to be British. Oh god oh god oh god oh god make it all stop.

Incidentally, as far the Turing Test goes I believe that actually this fails. It's supposed to test the 'ability to demonstrate intelligence' but if this qualifies as any kind of display of intelligence the whole universe must be a twisted and fucked up joke.

Meanwhile I see from Mr Eugenides that Britain is not just spending money on getting people to pretend to be machines but also on empty retail units pretending to be businesses. Words fail me.