A person once walked into my office on a dark, freezing cold February night: We’re desperate. We’re living in our car with our kids. We need a place that will take Sociel Services. We’ll take anything."
Agent: I have an apartment you can move into right away
Customer; Where is it?
Agent: On Pindle Avenue
Customer in very indigant voice: *I’m not living there! *
Not my story per se, but from the files of ‘The place I worked as a teen’…
My dad was a veterinarian, and I worked for him when he didn’t have extra help (on the weekends and the like). One week he tells me about this guy who came in with a bunny from the local animal shelter. The guy got a full check-up for the bun, but said he’d come back to get the shots ‘later’.
A month later he comes back with another li’l bunny, and again, check up and no shots.
Another month goes by, and he brings bunny #3 in. Dad’s looking it over, and the guy lets slip…
“Yeah, this one looks to be good eatin’.” :eek:
My dad took the rabbit, ordered the guy out of the office, and immediately called the shelter to tell them never to give this guy another animal, bunny or otherwise.
I worked 7 years in a call center, and handled many memorable calls. Three of the most memorable:
Worst call I ever handled: Female caller from East St. Louis called to demand why her bank account showed a negative balance of over $400. I explained that the account had become overdrawn, overdraft charges were assessed, and after a period of days a “daily overdraft fee” was assessed every day. The woman became irate (this is common among folks who think overdraft fees are simply illegal) and began to accuse my bank of stealing her money to pay the bank president an inflated salary, and launced into a rant about how white folks kept the black people down by stealing their money. The more I tried to calm her down, the more excited she became, until she was threatening to come the the bank (I was in a call center in Denver but she thought I was in her local bank) and cut my throat. I terminated the call and called the branches in her area to alert them, but never heard back.
Funniest call I ever handled: Again, for the banking client – Jessica from Sacramento called one day in April a few years ago and said her daddy had told her to call us. I looked up Jessica’s account – nearly $1,200 in arrears! “How did that happen?” she asked, obviously stunned at the news. I immediately suspected fraud or theft, and began a transaction-by-transaction analysis of the account. I found something very different. Seems in March there had been a series of sizeable debits in San Diego – one to a hotel, several to bars, restaurants and liquor stores, a few nightclubs, and numerous large cash withdrawals – all within a five-day period. Then, nothing. No activity whatsoever. Just the ongoing overdraft fees.
I listed all of the debits and withdrawals for Jessica, and there was a long silence. Finally, I asked, “So, Jessica, did you have a good time on spring break?” After another silence, Jessica replied, “Oh, God, I hope so!”
And the best call I ever handled: Supporting a DSL internet provider (same Denver call center, by the way) and got a late-night call from “Jeremy,” who was frantic that his DSL had crapped out just as he was about to file his master’s thesis online. It was after 11 p.m. where he was, the deadline was … yup, midnight … and Jeremy’s internet was goin’ nowhere fast. I calmed him down, pinged out to his router and walked him through the troubleshooting script – nothing. It was nearly 11:30. I pulled up the next tier of troubleshooting, we re-programmed his DSL router, re-booted the computer, uninstalled and re-installed the router drivers – still nothing. At 11:45 we started all over again, from the beginning, checking all connections, I even had Jeremy go under the desk and re-check the cables on everything. No matter what we did, I could not get his router to answer my ping. And the third time I asked him to recite back to me the lighting array on his router, I heard it – the “line” light was flashing one second on, one second off. It was supposed to be flickering with no pattern. I pinged again, still no reply. The problem wasn’t in Jeremy’s setup, it was in the DSL carrier’s lines. I sent a whisper message to my supervisor that I was going to slam the line – if it worked, the pulse would force the balky analog switches in the terminal to close and Jeremy would be back online. If it didn’t, I’d probably take down several circuits and spend the rest of my shift doing paperwork explaining what had happened. Before my supervisor could reply, I sent the pulse down the line. I held my breath. Moments later I heard Jeremy say, “Hey, something’s happening – I’m online!” He called up his e-mail, attached the thesis and, at six minutes before midnight, hit the “Send” button. It went. A moment later my supervisor messaged me back to NOT slam the line. I emailed back, “OK,” gave Jeremy his case number, logged the call and clocked out for a much-needed break. It wasn’t a big deal, but for a new minutes I felt like James Bond – and Jeremy called me a hero.
I worked in the transcripts office at the University of Texas when I was an undergrad. Occasionally people who graduated decades earlier would request a transcript, and those required a bit of hunting since they were on microfilm or microfiche. Most of the time we could find them on the first try, but once in a while someone would get lost. Usually there was a name change involved, or they had the attendance dates wrong. With some follow up, we could usually find them.
But one day, a nice gentleman called and gave me lots of information about his studies back in the 40s and asked for a transcript. Nothing on the files, so I had to call him back. He was happy to give me more detail. Still nothing. So my boss called him and wound up inviting him in so they could try to straighten everything out. The man came in, looking very dapper in his suit, and my boss invited him into his office. 15 minutes later, the man stormed out and my boss came out looking harried. He had asked the man if his transcript could be under another name and he started rattling off a whole bunch of them–including Woodrow Wilson and Frank Lloyd Wright. My boss, uncertain where to go from there, said he wasn’t sure we’d have all those records, but that he’d look into it himself. Somehow that upset Mr. Wilson/Wright and he started yelling that he was a spaceman–and that’s when he stormed out of the office.
The other one was also at the transcripts office. I was working at the front desk, taking in-person requests. A woman came in just a few minutes before closing and asked for a transcript, so I went through the usual spiel of having her fill out a form and show her ID. When I asked for ID, she upended her enormous purse on the counter and started shuffling through a bizarre assortment of junk. She finally produced her ID and dumped everything back into her bag while I helped her fill out the form. Her name, she informed me was Psychic Queen (didn’t match her ID) and her major was astrology. She still had two special telescopes on top of the astrology building, apparently, one labeled Psychic A and the other labeled Psychic B. Remembering our friend the spaceman, I dreaded telling her what I already knew–no transcript–but she was OK with it. She just acted slightly disappointed, thanked me, and left.
?? Rabbits are traditional food animals, and if one acquires a rabbit of unknown provenance, it only makes sense to have it checked out before one eats it. It’s not like this guy was getting dogs or cats from the shelter and eating them – getting angry about someone eating a rabbit makes about as much sense as getting angry cos they’re eating a chicken.
But adopting an animal from a shelter means the animal is going to be a pet, not dinner. I think most shelters have people sign agreements that the animal will be a pet, will be cared for, etc. to prevent someone from doing what this guy did.
I love rabbit meat myself, but this guy was being dishonest about his intentions. If he was really thinking, he would’ve just adopted the first two, bred them, and had fresh, young rabbit for the pot.
Maybe it was Lazarus Long.
When I was in college I worked as the IT guy for a small division of Mobil Oil. These folks had never had computers before.
One time a receptionist called me: “Does it hurt my computer if I put change in it?”
Me: “Uh…are you putting change in it?”
Her: <hangs up>
So I go to her office, pull the cover off her computer and find about 8 dollars worth of change in it. Apparently she had been putting nickels, dimes and quarters into the disk drive slot. 
Another one was actually a pretty interesting call. She would save her XLS file onto a disk. Sometimes the next morning the file was corrupt. After several days of trying to figure out what was going on, I finally figured it out: she would save her XLS file to disk, then hide the disk under her phone and go home. The next morning, she would take it out from under her phone and start using it again. If someone called her before she took the disk out, the solenoid in the ringer in her phone would demagnetize it. If nobody called first, no problem. Ugh.
I thought this would be a hugely entertaining thread, given my early background in meeting and dealing with the public…
And it kinda was, I got some good laughs, thank you all.
But it also reminded me why I got the heck out of that and went into computers and ultimately, independant consulting.
Now, if I ever get that kind of crap, I can just give 'em the finger and get on the next flight out.
Thank you, Jesus!
I had a seriously unstable (and stinking drunk) woman in my office the other day. She was telling stories about how she used to be blind until Jesus told her to take the moon out of the sky and place it on her eyelids. She did and was magically cured.
Some of her better stories involve going around the city “Breathing life into dead babies”. Or finding out that she is a country music star and has been for years she just didn’t know it.
I had to have her thrown out when she stood up pointed at me and screamed “In the name of lord king Jesus, take off your pants” followed by “don’t worry my son, now you won’t have any trouble pissing.”
I get some strange folk, let me tell ya.
Damnit, the thread’s being weird again
(Ignore this post please)
Just for extra perspective on this thread, I decided to Google “customer rage”. I learned two very scary things:
In fact one site suggests the business should always assume the blame, which is only going to stress out underpaid, undertrained employees even further. If the posts to this thread are any indication, there are a LOT of angry, stupid people out there who are basically looking to be spoiled like royal brats whenever they lay out dough, and are fully prepared to go postal when they don’t receive that treatment. And that’s not even touching on the homeless, psychics, adoptive-bunny-eaters, or well-dressed old gents claiming to be Astronaut Woodrow Wilson.
Just out of curiosity, what’s your job?
One of these posts reminded me of a guy who came into our camera shop, complaining that his new camera didn’t work. None of his films where coming out, and he was mighty pissed. We took his camera in and ran some film through it while he wandered the mall, and everything (of course) appeared to be fine. When we showed him the photos, and told him everything appeared to be fine, he grumbled a bit and took the camera home again.
3 days later, he was back in, this time furious. He’d used the camera at his kid’s party, and again, the film came out totally black. We apologized profusely, and asked him to stay with us while we ran the tests. We gave him a fresh roll of film, watched him load it into the camera, then quickly shot 12 shots around the store. When we asked him to unload the film, he popped open the camera, pulled the whole roll out of the camera, then spent a couple of minutes winding it back into the canister.
That story is a hoot when combined with your user name.
Ok I wasn’t the one working but this happened yesterday. I walk up to the register at a fast food place to order. Then this lady pushes me aside ans demands her money back from the guy behind the counter because she’s sick of waiting for her food. He agrees and starts processing the return. It seemed to be a long process. 2 min. into it her food comes up.
The guy behind the counter offered her the food in case she wanted it instead of waiting for her $1.70 back. She said “No, I’m sick of waiting”
OMG take your danm food already! So she waited another 3min. to get her money and leave because she was in such a hurry. Now I’ve always been good at keeping my thoughts to myself in situations like this. But this was a test of my will.
I wanted to throw $2 bucks at her tell her to GTF out of my way cause now she’s making me wait for some point she’s trying make about how crappy service is there. She’s now the cause of the wiat of others food. Uuurgh.
About a year ago, I received a call from an agent who sells our product. He was having problems with the fact that I couldn’t have a transaction processed today, even though it was after the close of business (I think; I don’t remember what exactly caused it). I explained reasonably and rationally why we could not do as he had asked. After a while, he angrily pointed out that he knew where we were located, and where I worked.
This was probably true, as he worked just two towns over on the same road.
I logged the call and reported it to one of my supervisors, who told me not to worry about it, but man that freaked me out. He still calls sometimes–he is an agent, after all–and that always gives me a bit of a chill.
I was a travel agent for over 12 years.
During that period I had:
My favorite was the wealthy woman that we booked on a trek in Nepal. She had been extensively prepped as to what she could expect and given several books to read about the region. She arrived in Katmandu and proceeded to bombard our office (and the agency owner at night on her home phone) with calls and faxes complaining that the Nepalese people were all “yellow-brown with black hair” had "slanted eyes "and were “dirty”, that Katmandu was a third world city, and that she was miserable being surrounded by people that didn’t look or talk like her.
We immediately aborted the trek and got her into a luxury hotel in Bangkok where she was apparently much more comfortable being surrounded by a subservient staff of people that were “yellow-brown with black hair that had slanted eyes”.
I worked in an IT department at a large public university for 10 years, and served short stretches of time sitting in on the Help Desk (usually while the regular techies were at lunch). This is, as best as I can reconstruct it, an actual transcription of a call I got one day.
ME: (Picking up the call) Help Desk, this is Kizarvexius.
GROUCHY FEMALE CALLER: Yeah, I want to talk to someone about this computer. It doesn’t work.
M: Okay, what seems to be the problem?
GFC: It doesn’t work.
M: Well…what doesn’t work?
GFC: The computer. It doesn’t work.
M: Okay, what’s it doing?
GFC: Nothing. The thing doesn’t work.
M: (With as much courtesy as I can muster) I understand that it’s not working, ma’am. What it is not doing?
GFC: It’s not doing anything. It doesn’t work.
M: Is it not turning on?
GFC: (As if I’m OBVIOUSLY a moron) I told you. It. Doesn’t. Work.
M: Ma’am, there’s not much I can do from here to help you if I don’t know what the symptoms are.
GFC: (Increasingly annoyed) I told you what the symptoms are. The damned thing doesn’t work!
M: (Struggling to remain calm) I’ll tell you what, ma’am. I’ll log in a call and send a member of our support team over to take a look at it. Just a moment and I’ll give you the call reference number.
GFC: Good. I’ll put it here with all the others.
I took down her information and assigned the service call to one of the techies. A few minutes later, the same woman called back to complain about how rude I had been. Thankfully she was put through to the other operator on duty, who had heard pretty much the whole thing.