"I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do." 

This has become my least favorite phrase in the English language.  No other statement admits as much weakness, ineptitude, and uselessness as this one.  I often hear it after hours of phone calls to customer support, often after several transfers and several more dead ends. 

The reason this phrase makes me angry is not so much because certain people legitimately don't have the ability to perform certain actions, but because the people who use this phrase often use it as a way to end the conversation, a way to get me off the phone.  It's not that they can't do anything, it's that they don't want to.  And even if they sincerely aren't able to do anything, these types of people are often not even willing to recommend a course of action or a person to contact.  It's the attitude behind the phrase that really gets to me.  "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."  It's more like, "I'm not really sorry, loser jerk, but I have no desire to continue this conversation or to help you in anyway." #psychology