You know, I’m a tolerant kind of person. I work in a call center and I’m used to people ranting and bitching and calling me names, it’s just part of the job and it all rolls off my back. Usually.
However, yesterday I had the creepiest experience of my life on the phone with a customer. It started out well, personable person being polite, me with my good little phoneclone manners on, but somewhere a left turn into GrottyLand happened. The customer was requesting a piece of information that has to be requested, via email, from a specific department, and it takes up to 24 hours for them to respond to a request. According to the notes, this guy had already called in several times and had been told that the information has been requested and is on its way, but he’s convinced that I’m witholding the information for some obscure and perverse reason of my own. He gets pissy and says I’m accusing him of having stolen his cell phone, that the reason I won’t give him the information he KNOWS I have right in front of me is that I’m impugning his honesty. I carefully and calmly explain to him AGAIN that this is not the case, the information will arrive when it arrives and I cannot hurry the process. I ask him if there is anything else I can help him with, he says no and I thank him for his patronage and wish him a good day, to which he replies:
(Wait for it!)
“I HOPE YOU DIE SOON.”
Ohmyfuckinggoddess! This gave me the worst set of the willies I’ve had since a batch of hirsute, overweight wannabe Chippendale’s dancers lost their thongs right in front of me! Still haven’t shaken it off completely.
So, being in possession of all kinds of personal information about this creep, I gave his phone numbers and his name to my son, who isn’t happy that this shitweasel dissed his mom, and I expect Mr. Goatfelching Fucktard will not be sleeping well for the next few weeks. My son has a lot of friends who like me, too, and who are always up for a spot of well conceived mischief. I’ve also promised that if he changes his number, I’ll get his new one to them too, for as long as necessary to teach this grotty fucker not to mess with Customer Care Reps.
Fuck not with those who have all your personal information at their fingertips and who are willing to allow themselves to be the instruments of karmic vengeance!
You do realize that you can lose your job for this, right? That information is supposed to be confidential.
I don’t begrudge you the opportunity to make this man’s life a living hell for what he said (I’ve worked in call centers, too), but this really should have gone through the appropriate channels. You should have gone to your company, and then taken it to the authorities. If they find out what you’ve done, you WILL lose your job. Period. Do you have any notes on the account that can identify you? If so, I’d encourage your son and his friends to cease and desist immediately.
Aleq, to quote a line from childhood “Two wrongs don’t make a right” If I was your boss and found out about what you had done I’d fire your butt. And if I was the asshole customer I would sue you into the next life, and as a bystander I would reluctantly be on the creepy customer’s side.
Seriously, ask your son and his friends not to bother this guy, unless you’re looking to make a career change in the very near future and possibly spend some time behind bars.
People often say things they don’t mean when they’re angry. And why wouldn’t the guy be angry if he’s called several times, been promised information, and failed to get it. What kind of shitty company do you work for anyway?
Having several people harrass him and make his life miserable is hardly a good solution. All you’re doing is escalating the situation. “Grotty” or not, just let the matter drop. If you want to talk about creepy, your plans are far moreso than someone’s angry, heat-of-the-moment utterance in response to your company’s incompetence.
I do tech support for a national dialup ISP. We’re small, staff-wise, but have a very large customer base. When we first started off, I was the only person on the phones doing support, so if you called during the day, you got me. As a new ISP, we attracted a lot of would-be spammers and hackers who had been booted by their other ISP’s and thought that we wouldn’t catch on. Um, wrong. These people would call, be informed that their account had been disabled due to spamming/hacking (which was in clear violation of our Terms of Service, not to mention possibly illegal depending on if they were hacking) and would keep calling back to threaten me, thinking they could bully me into getting their cheap dialup access back so they could continue to spam away. Um, no. Made for some shitty days, where the same caller would call repeatedly and harrass me.
I have had one man demand our address so he could “get on a plane from Colorado and come kick my ass”. I’ve had another man tell me he “knew where I worked and was going to come teach me a lesson”. I’ve had at least five others tell me to fuck off and die, another tell me he hoped I died horribly. And so on.
I simply pointed out that making phone threats is illegal, and note the fact that I have their home address and phone number on screen in front of me. And then I use my magic Googling skills to find the phone number of their local police department, read it off to them, and tell them I am now ending the call.
Of course I never called the cops. But their frantic return calls to apologize were still amusing.
Giving his phone number to your son is no more “right” than his telling you he wished you died soon. I sympathize, as I’ve been doing phone support for almost 10 years now. Nothing people will say or do in anger to an anonymous person on the other end of a phone surprises me anymore. But as noted above, two wrongs don’t make a right.
I used to work for a large catalog company which sold, among many MANY other things, clothing.
Early on in my CSR career I found out we had stopped selling women’s undergarments by a gentleman who was MOST upset because he found it calming and soothing to vacuum and clean house while wearing said undergarments and we were the only place he knew of which sold a size large enough to fit his…um. Package.
And the undergarments apparently fit his Package very well because he proceeded to tell me how comfortable they were, how well they fit, and all about the many mirrors in his place which allowed him to examine himself in each and every possible cleaning pose known to mankind.
Go ahead, Aleq, lay some creepiness on me. I dare you.
You’re really buying this story? After 2 prank kiddie calls, I’d start recording them, then take the mother down. Might even threaten her boss with calling the press. BIG settlement.
Who did your training? Did they mention they possibility of secret shoppers? Did they discuss customers who are looking for the call center equivalent of a bogus slip-and-fall lawsuit?
Could there be any other reasons for rules about confidential information? Hmmm. Oh, what if someone is suing your company with claims that her stalker managed to get information unique to her association with your company? And what if her lawyers find this guy, whose confidential information wasn’t safe with you… Bingo, everyone loses their job!
I was never immature about things like this.
Do y’all think that when I’m an old lady I’ll be putting sugar in gas tanks and sending fake telegrams announcing deaths?
Baker and Sauron are right. You handled this all wrong.
The next time something like this happens, either go to your supervisor and try to get a break or find a way to vent before you do something you can’t take back.
P.S. As Rasa explains, tt’s gonna happen again. And if you haven’t had a caller cry and weep and because you’ve ruined her life, then be on the lookout for that, too.
Part of my job entails customer service via telephone. Worst cutomer I’ve had so far was some guy who started ranting about our policy regarding correction requests. All our official correspondence says to contact the person sending the correspondence if there is a problem. I calmly told him that I cannot take any correction requests over the phone and that they have to be submitted in writing. I’m not even capable of making corrections, that’s up to the paralegals. The guy wouldn’t listen, started yelling, then we were cut off. I later found out that he called my boss and reported me for hanging up on him! Customers can yell at me all they want but there is no way I’d hang up on one.
I was with you up until the last two paragraphs. IANAL, but it sounds to me like what you did could constitute a federal crime, meaning federal prison. I hope you were merely relaying a fantasy and not telling us what you actually did, because that would be quite stupid.
I like your style, Aleq. In this day and age, it’s nice to see a parent risk a criminal record for herself and her son to do things together.
Of course, if the caller is as paranoid as you said, it’s very sweet of you to make sure he gets the help he needs, pushing him over the edge by actually having people out to get him.
The salt of the Earth you are. I don’t understand why anybody could see what you did as wrong.
Jeff Olsen - Hey! The rest of the story? Did you the good luck to work from somebody who would believe you? (Or had a system logging who ended the call.)
Oh many of those. I’ve had three threaten to kill themselves: one of whom threatened to kill herself if I didn’t “turn her internet back on right now”, another incoherently screaming where all I picked out was the gist that she was so frustrated with our service that she was going to shoot herself in the head, and a man that said that without his dialup access he simply couldn’t live.
Oh and the woman who screamed in an increasingly chipmunk-like voice about how it was illegal for us to claim we were open 10 am till 10 pm if it’s only 10 am to 10 pm EST (which is clearly noted anywhere we mention our hours) and that she was calling her lawyer who likes to take down scum like us and she works for the IRS and knows people in the FCC so she can say fuck all she likes, how do you like that? Fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK!
I wouldn’t want my (hypothetical) kids dealing with any of these people, toughguy or not.
I’ve had a customer demand my address so he could “hop on a plane and kick your ass”. One call to Corporate Security - account was closed and his local authorities were the ones to inform him.
I’ve also had the joy of verifying a customer had purchased over $500 worth of Vivid Video titles. Vivid thoughtfully listed the movie titles on the statement so I could know exactly what his fetishes were. When I asked him “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”, he asked what I was wearing. shudder
I told him a burka and a ski mask, then wished him a nice day and hung up.
That’s not exactly f**k you very much" or the like. That IS creepy.
I agree with the others here, but for an additional reason. He sounds tweaked. Tweaked people aren’t necessarily stupid, he could have technical (or even low tech) ways to find out who YOU are too.
I’d do a recall on the “fun bunch” if I were you.
I don’t blame you a bit for wanting to get back at him( I think I’D fantasize about waking this creep up several times a night too), but it’s just not worth it. Either the potential for losing your job, or for payback from him.
