Me, myself...and a total fuckin' moron

The BBQ Pit
1

What follows is the transcript of a three way conversation that I had at work today (I work in a credit card centre sorting out peoples credit card problems/requests). The participants were Myself, the customer and my inner monologue.

Me: Good afternoon, welcome to [censored] you’re through to [me] how can I help you?

Customer (who from this moment forth shall be referred to as hystrionic gibbering chimp - HGC): Yes, I was looking at my credit card statement and there’s $400.00 on there that I don’t recognise.

Me: Okay, before I look at your account I need to ask a couple of details for security.

Customer (HGC): Why? Do you think I’m some sort of thief?

My inner monologue (or MIM): Well lessee, you’re acting aggressively, being pushy, trying to intimidate me and refusing to answer any security questions. Well, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

Me: No, no, no not at all, it’s just a proceedure we have to go through. It won’t take a second.

HGC: I’m a fee paying customer and I refuse to be humiliated any more than I have been already by being interrogated. I don’t need erudition from the likes of you?

**MIM: Erudition? Ooh four syllables. Gee I must be talking to a professor or at the very least a doctor of English. I’d best start my bowing and scraping now lest the brilliance of her wit exposes me for the illiterate, semi-lucid, dirt common little street urchin that I am. Pity the word you were looking for was probably approbation. And what’s all this ‘likes of me’ talk? You mean the likes of those who don’t have such a piss poor grasp of English that they expose themselves as being hopelessly out of their depth by the third line of a conversation? **

Me: I’m a fraid I really can’t help you without asking these details, I’m sorry.

MIM: Why, in the name of Christs holy pogostick, am I apologising?

HGC: Ok fine, Date of birth 12/11/47 mothers maiden name Seema.

Me: Thank you. Now you said there was a problem with a 400.00 entry on your statement?

HGC: WELL THAT’S WHAT I SAID DIDN’T I?

MIM: Hello? taps mic Hellooooo? Is there an echo in here? Or did I just ask you a rhetorical question that you utterly failed to recognise? Nah, must be an echo.

Me: I’ve had a look at the 400.00 and it appears that it was actually a payment from us to you. You requesed 400.00 to be taken from the card and placed into your bank account. We had to debit the credit card to do that.

HGC: Well I KNOW that.

MIM: Well why the Fuck did you pick up the phone to ask me then? That’s what it fucking is.

HGC: You’re useless, get me a manager.

MIM: And you’re a fucking loon, get thee a lobotomy. at least then you’d have an excuse for dribbling your incomprehensible gobshite into my ear.

Me: With all due respect I see no need to involve a unit manager, the entry on your statement is a transfer of funds that you have requested.

HGC: AND???

MIM: And WHAT? You gormless cocksprocket, that’s what it is!!

HGC: I don’t WANT the funds to go there, I want them to go on the card.

Me: Well at some point you must have requested the transfer. We don’t do them without explicit permission.

HGC: I’m going on holiday soon and I need the funds.

Me: Ok, just bear with me one moment. Would you mind if I put you on hold?

HGC: No, don’t you dare, I…

Me: Ok then (I put her on hold anyway)

*At this point I go off to check her account details. I notice two things (a) She has a credit limit of $14, 000.00 (wonder who she must’ve been sucking off to get that) and it’s nearly clear so she obviously doesn’t need the 400.00 and (b) she has note after note after note on her account saying things like “C/H(cardholder) is extremely volatile” “C/H is extremely difficult to deal with” “If C/H phones pass her through to a unit manager IMMEDIATELY as she is extremely difficult to talk to.”

“Aw shit.” I think to myself, “What have I gotten myself into”. I then return to the conversation.*

Me: Hello?

HGC: Yes!

Me: If you want that 400.00 to be put back into your account you’re going to have to contact your bank and arrange a transfer. Do you want me to give you the appropriate account number and sort code?

HGC: NO! I want you to do it. And I want you to do it right now.

Me: I’m afraid I can’t authorise a transfer on your behalf, you need to speak to them to give permission

HGC: My bank will understand.

MIM: No they fucking won’t you acephalic fetal halfbirth! The Data Protection Act explicitly forbids discussion of your account by anyone other than you and your bank. Now I know that the Ape creatures of the Indas probably have a clearer grasp of the English language than you but I would have thought that even a hystrionic simpleton like yourself will have grasped this extraordinarily simple premise.

HGC: You’re obviously incompetant, let me speak to a manager.

Me really starting to lose my grip: THey’ll only tell you the same thing. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, I’m sorry.

HGC: Am I hallucinating? Or did I not just tell you to get me a manager?

MIM: Am I hallucinating, or are you a cunt? Now I don’t know what your parents did to you to turn you into the colonic parasite you are today and frankly I don’t wanna know 'cos it must’ve been pretty fucking hideous but if you say one more fucking word I’m gonna cut you off right now 'cos there’s no way in hell I’m gonna inflict you onto a manager. I have to work with these guys tomorrow. Besides, now it’s personal. I’m gonna sort you out.

Me: I assure you I’m perfectly adept at dealing with your query.

HGC: Well you’ve done a pathertic job so far! I want that 400.00 put onto my barclaycard immediately.

**Me & MIM: Excuse me? Did you say barclaycard? **

HGC: Yes?

Me: We aren’t Barclaycard.

HGC: But you’re the ones who transferred the funds. It’s your mistake

Me: With all due respect we didn’t make any mistake. We were acting on your wishes

HGC: And why would I wish to do something like that?

MIM: I don’t know, perhaps one day you were coming down off the same sort of PCP induced frenzy you’re currently experiencing and decided it would be fun to play ‘investor’ and switch some money around. Or maybe you’re just a cunt who can only function on a daily basis by regularly pissing on those employed to help you.

Me: I don’t know but if you want the funds to go to barclaycard you should be on the phone to the Bank right now arranging a transfer to barclaycard.

HGC: Get me a manager now you stupid boy (she actually said that!)

Me: No. You go sort your own fucking problem out I’ve had enough of your crap (I actually said that too!)

At this point I hung up.

Unfortunately the old cuntsore rang back and presumably bullied the poor soul she spoke to next into speaking to a manager where she made a formal complaint the result of this being thatI got a formal ‘disciplinary’ (3 of them and yer out).

And they say there’s justice in the world?

2

What a total bitch! I am sooooooo very glad you told her off, even if it means you got a disciplinary. I am surprised you did, because considering her record, you’d think anything she had to say was disregarded.

Go-go-go!

3

Boy, I’ve been in Customer Service of one kind or another for 21 years! Yes, this caller is an idiot. Yes, she put you through hell.

Yes, you are an utter moron for first refusing her demand for a manager, which is what they are PAID to do, and second, EVER, for ANY reason, using an obscenity to a customer!

If I was your manager, the first numbskull mistake (not getting a manager) gets you a warning. Using an obscenity to a customer gets you a visit from me and a security guard, and an invitation to pack your shit and leave!

You took the money, you know the rules, you fucked up severely. You are a lucky guy. Use your luck wisely and get some help with your temper or get another job. You can’t hack phone service if a little call like that drives you to idiocy.

4

Tell me about it dude. I’m packing the job in next week anyway since that call did at least made me realise how much I utterly loathe and despise all forms of customer service.

I just wanted to get that skank out of my system :slight_smile:

5

You may have a point there adiplomat. But I still like what he did!

~And I know it wasn’t right- But it felt so good… -Better Than Ezra
(I use this tag line all the time, but it fits REALLY well here!)

6

People who’ve never done it laugh or sneer, but phone support/customer service is the MOST stressful job aside from cop. Even soldiers get to shoot back, but we NEVER can!

BTW, NOT taking anything away from soldiers, I’d rather have my job than theirs.

7

I don’t know which branches of customer service you have worked in but in the call centre I currently work in I’m expected to take 17 calls an hour which works out at just under 120 calls a day. About 80 of them start off with “I want to speak to a manager”. Part of my job is trying to defuse the situation without involving the managers. I mean that’s an actual directive. I recognise that it was a major fuck up to swear at her but man it felt GOOD!! :wink:

8

Heh heh…

** People who’ve never done it laugh or sneer, but phone support/customer service is the MOST stressful job aside from cop. Even soldiers get to shoot back, but we NEVER can! **

I have the worst job possible then...911 Dispatcher.

Studies have shown that only 10% of all calls to 911 are actually emergencies. My own research has shown the other 90% are all fucking morons.

~Can you be so warm- Can you know what I feel? -Better Than Ezra

9

I can sort of sympathize with the caller. Once, I had funds taken out of my account to pay for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. However, I had never been a customer of Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

When I went to the bank to complain, the lady that I spoke to told me that the bank couldn’t take money out of my account without my authorization. I told I hadn’t given any sort of authorization.

Her reply? I must have given authorization, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the money out. Now that there’s some keen logic.

Eventually, it was all straightened out. Both my first name and last name can be used for either first names or last names (e.g. Martin Frank/Frank Martin), and someone with my inverse name was indeed a customer of BC/BS.

That said, I thought that the OP was hilarious. Way to put her in her place!

10

there have been plenty of times i wanted to shout, “no, dipshit, our servers are not down! stop telling me that the problem is with us, when you are obviously too stupid to realize you have to open a fucking browser!”

but i can’t.

when a customer yells at us we simply warn them that if they continue we will disconnect the call. you should hear my s.o., he’s so good at this. he’s a supervisor, so he gets the customers who have already yelled at techs, but he keeps totally calm. they hate that. after three warnings, they get hung up on.

11

120 calls a day? I’m expected to handle at least that mnay before lunch. I want your job. Actually I don’t, I want the job of someone who doesn’t have to speak to 200 idiots a day who don’t understand what it means to read numbers off a check (“what, you want all the numbers?” Yes, shitball, I want all twenty numbers left to right, in order, which part of that is so troublesome to your three ganglia?). At least in my current job I only have to talk to idjits who work at the store and not the idjits trying to pass checks on accounts with no money in them.

Next time you get a call that’s marked “transfer immediately to manager” then transfer it to a manager. Yes, we drones are supposed to try to keep calls from “escalating” (my personal favorite term, BTW) but if management has already said “give all of this person’s calls to us” then do it and bid her farewell as you kick her off your line.

12

adiplomat

bolding mine

Huh?

I’m not going to laugh or sneer but with all seriousness, get a grip.

When I think of the most stressful jobs a person can be in phone support/customer service doesn’t top my list as despite the fact you can’t shoot back you also don’t have to deal with life threatening situations and real human suffering.

Stressful jobs:

Law Enforcement
Military
Firefighting
EMT/Paramedic
Surgeon
Nurses
Social Work
Rehabilitation

I work in the last category, my job is a pretty peaceful one now but there was a time I only worked with young offenders and violent psych patients. If you have a job where people are trying to take you out on a regular basis, that’s stress.

Dealing with cranky people on the phone? Puhleese.

13

i read that air traffic controller was the job with the highest suicide rate. don’t have a cite for it, though.

14

My sympathies Gomez.

People like this are are scum. They abuse the fact that your job is on the line in your dealings with them to act in a way that they would not dare to if they met you in a social situation. They see customer service workers, bar staff, waiters etc as a kickable underclass upon which they can vent their frustrations and bolster their shabby egos.

When I was 18 I worked in a bar in which one of the regulars took great delight in taunting me, making threats of violence, and on the one particular night it all blew up, grabbing my ass and balls as I tried to clear empty glasses and full ashtrays. I invited him to join me in the car park and proceeded to beat the shit out of him. It cost me my job, but the look of stunned surprise on the assholes face was worth it.

People remain people regardless of their job and deserve a basic level of respect and civilty

milo

15

Should I post it? Aw, what the hell:

http://www.customerssuck.com
You’ll thank me later.

16

Excellent posting, Gomez! I especially liked the running “inner monologue” commentary; very much like “Mister Subliminal.”

Just for sheer entertainment, and as a favour from a current credit industry employee (you) to a former credit industry employee (me), would you care to comment on the OP in the following thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=96359&pagenumber=1?

17

I am here merely to point out the irony that this poster chose “adiplomat” for a username. I certainly hope that’s a reference to the car he or she drives.

18

I’m always bothered by the people who demand to talk to a manager. Look, the customer service employees have that job for a reason. Some don’t know what they are doing, but the vast majority of them do. And the manager will just tell you the same thing anyway. I mean, if it’s the employee’s job to get the manager, why have employee’s at all? Why not just have all the managers working customer service? Or have all the CS employees promoted to managers…

19

Or you could do yourself a favour and read all the posts in the thread, especially the one near the end of page 1, wherein, after several helpful credit industry employees (or folks in the know, perhaps) gave me the much-needed education as to why my rant was unjustified, I admitted that I was wrong. I wouldn’t think that, after such an admission, Monty would feel the need to bring it up in a totally unrelated thread, but it has become apparent to me that his reading comprehension skills are less than average. He probably skimmed right over that bit, even though it was specifically directed toward him.

But, since he has brought it up, I think I too will do myself a favour and extend Monty a nice, hearty, “Kindly fuck off, sir.”

[/hijack]

That having been said, I once worked in customer service as well and can certainly sympathise with Gomez. My “favourite” customer ever threatened to physically attack me and the other employees in the store because of the way we handled his problem (directly from the script, might I add). Lucky for me I was blessed with the most infinite sense of patience and did not resort to cursing at him, like I so very badly wanted to. I did let loose the longest string of expletives I have ever uttered the moment I hung up the phone, though :slight_smile: He ended up calling back and threatening each of the employees so veraciously that we felt we were fully justified in calling the police and having them around to protect people leaving during their late-night shift. Nothing happened, but we all felt pretty threatened by the jerk.

I think you’re lucky you got off with just the formal disciplinary. If I’d said what I’d been thinking at any given time whilst on the phone with that jerk I know for certain I’d have been fired, no matter how clean my record was previously :slight_smile: Then again, my boss never had to deal with that guy … perhaps if he did, he would have understood :slight_smile:

20

Oops :slight_smile: I missed it on preview. That ought to say ‘voraciously’ not ‘veraciously’ … I don’t think any of our employees were deserving of such threats, and since none of the threats were ever acted upon they were definitely not ‘honest’ or ‘truthful’! More like ravenous … like you could hear the guy slobbering all over himself as he envisioned beating the crap out of 'em :wink: