I can see both sides of the argument to be fair. Engineers as far as I know are paid per job completed and that's obviously going to make them do each job as quickly as possible!
That doesn't mean that the engineer can treat customers as bad as that though!
Another point to bear in mind is that the engineer is not insured to touch your PC (unless things have changed since I left Ntl last October) or unless you have asked for an assisted install which I don't think you can get in all regions. So they are not going to want to get blamed for a customers problems connecting broadband up to their PC. This is a good thing for me as I often get called out to people who want me to setup their broadband for them
Which \i'm more than happy to do!