Question Author
I never used the word 'mere' before housewife, nor did I say that I am 'always' tearing my hair out. What I said was that I was 'tearing my hair out' at that time (when I was writing the question). The reason being that I had spent over an hour the previous day explaining to someone the difference between an email username and password, and the username and password used to get into our network. I had also done this with the same client the day before, and last week. I had given her a written copy of both the system logon handout that we use, and the e-mail handout that we use, and STILL she was putting her email address in the system logon box. At that opoint, there's not much one can do, except 'tear their hair out', but I still carried on calmly repeating myself, trying to exaplin it in yet more different ways, i.e. the difference between your PIN for a cashcard and the PIN for your mobile phone.
I love my job, truly I do, but sometimes it gets a little on top of me, and that was just one of those days, so I apologise for offending you, as I so clearly had.
I don't want to turn this into a 'smudge vs shybearuk' thread, as there's been enough unpleasantness on Answerbank over the summer, without us bitching at one another, but I hope that this has gone some way to explaining why I said what I said.