I get the feeling that the people that Otto deals with aren’t customers in the sense that he sees no monetary gain from their calls. As sad as it is, I know for a fact it makes a difference; when your check depends on someone spending money with you, you tend to treat them better or they’ll tell you to piss off and call somebody else.
Exactly. X is what gets you on your way to finding the Holy Grail.
My god, the sheer breadth and depth of the stupidity of this remark is staggering. That you could interpret what I’ve said about phone use at home as in any possible way meaning that they are not allowed to answer their cell phone at home convinces me that your head is useful only for the purposes of growing hair and cleaning your colon. It doesn’t even make sense as reductio ad absurdem because it’s so completely stupid.
Because you of course sit in the next cubicle and have observed me every day on the job and are therefore an expert. Oh wait, no you haven’t, you’re basing this on my occasional need to blow off steam on a message board designated for that purpose!
You know, a couple of years ago I posted a thread in MPSIMS about some aspect or other of my customer service job that I really enjoyed. It sank like a stone and IIRC got zero replies. Everybody pisses and moans and declares me unfit when I start a thread about something irritating at work while completely ignoring the positive threads. Maybe everyone here doing the bitching ought to consider that this says more about them than it does about me.
Well, obviously he hasn’t. Adjacent your cubicle, he’d have already committed suicide to escape your endless muttering about the whereabouts of your red Swingline stapler.
DUDE! You fuckin’ kill me. 
No offense Otto, but that was funny shit.
I guarantee you I deal with ignorant fucks the likes you only have bad dreams about, but as they make my paycheck, I can’t (or won’t) bitch.
Be sure I respect your right to do so. It’s the fucking pit, after all.
That, unlike the OP, might merit some scorn - I thought everyone was on board with these.
No, the fact that you bitch and moan about the most miniscule of irritations is what makes people think you are unfit for customer service.
So a customer gives you a piece of information that you don’t need. So you have to prompt them for their number. Big fucking deal.
You know what happened at my work today? We had just closed and were straightening up when we discovered that somebody had sprayed diarrhea all over the outside of the toilet and left without cleaning it up or telling anybody that there was a problem. That, my friend, is worth getting annoyed about. But none of us were really that annoyed. Customers suck sometimes. Oh well.
You know what happened yesterday? The customers were getting on my nerves. It was my first day back from vacation, and I had had a stressful morning. There were a zillion noisy kids in the store. The phone kept ringing. Everybody wanted everything wrapped. People kept asking me over and over and over how much things cost, even though there was a price tag right on the item. My coworker was taking care of some stuff so he wasn’t around to help. Yes, I was irritated. But I knew that it was MY PROBLEM!! I didn’t blame the customers. They were just acting like typical customers–mostly nice, but sometimes clueless or thoughtless or socially handicapped. I groused to my coworker about it a little, and he sympathized, and all was well.
The vast vast majority of potentially annoying stuff that customers do just rolls off my back. If it does get to me, I know that the problem is with me, and not with them. Sometimes, I do get angry with a customer, but that is because the person has done something outrageous. I can’t imagine getting angry or annoyed with people for the ordinary everyday crap that they do.
Sometimes I have to ask them twice or three times to sign the charge slip. Oh well.
Sometimes they give me confusing and contradictory explanations about how they want things wrapped. I ask them to clarify. No problem.
Sometimes they tell me their whole life story and the whole life story of whoever they’re buying a gift for, and they do it while I have other people waiting on line and eleven other things to do. I just do the best I can to keep things brief and move right along.
And sometimes, if I need to ask for a phone number, they say something like “can I give you my cell number?” And I say “Sure. What is it?” See, that’s all you have to say.
Oh, I don’t know why I’m bothering to write all this. Otto is just going to dig his heels in and insist that the problem is that some people interperet a phrase in a way other than the Absolutely Correct Way According to Otto.
As it does for me. Every once in a while I feel the need to blow off some steam. I really ought to know better by now than to blow that steam off here because of the mob that’s lined up to revoke my steam license, but dumb me I keep thinking that a forum designed to vent petty frustrations is a place where I can vent petty frustrations.
Well, don’t they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result? 
Perhaps it’s an international thing. In the UK, and, I think the rest of Europe, your mobile/cellphone number is not tied to your location in any way. It also costs more to call mobiles than it does to call landlines - sometimes a lot more, depending on networks.
So most forms that have any international basis will have separate sections for home and mobile, and people get used to that.
Bedies, I would have thought that even unemplyed people in the US are allowed to leave the home sometimes, and the range of their cellphone extends beyond their backyard, so they might well not be at home.
You never answered, Otto. Pellets or hourly?