I work in an office where any one of nine people may answer the phone.
Three of us are male
This happened to me TWICE in the same day… from different callers
Me - This is Rich
Caller - Andy?
Me - No, this is Rich
Caller - Sheldon?
Me - No, this is still Rich.
:smack:
I love when I get good service because I know how hard it can be to do it. My mom has been known to ask for somebody’s manager to tell them what a good job they did – and having been on the receiving end of that, it can really make your day to have somebody tell your boss how much help you were. Though it’s a bit nerve-wracking until you find out they want to compliment you, not complain!
Yesterday a customer called (I work in a computer service call center), complained about not being able to locate a certain button on a certain screen, and immediately demanded to be transfered to our billionaire celebrity CEO. :rolleyes:
Yeah, buddy. I, Mr. Call Center Employee, can immediately transfer you directly to the CEO of multi-billion dollar company just because you’re too stupid to be able to find a button on a certain screen. And he’s going to drop everything to take your call and help you with it. :dubious:
I resolved the issue with him in about 5 minutes. Took that long because he wasn’t on the screen he repeatedly claimed to be on and was a hugely in-observant dumbass.
Of course, people like him are the bane of my call-center life. I spend hours with people who are completely unable to see what is directly in front of their face and are willing to argue endlessly that they don’t see it up until you’re ready to give up, at which point they’ll suddenly notice it. Then you have the same bleeping conversation over the next button they need to push. :mad:
About two years ago when I was at the Science Center, we were hit by a tornado, the glass on the ceiling blew in, chairs out on the patio slamming against the wall.
And this moronic woman came up to me as I’m trying to help some little girl find her mother and started nagging me about the sleepover that was supposed to take place the following night. Finally I snapped at her: “Ma’am, right now, I can’t worry about that.” She kind of huffed, and then stomped off. Um, are you that stupid? We’re in the middle of a tornado here, dumbass!
And yes, we had a bunch of people nagging us about refunds. We DID get around to them, after we got some of the glass swept up and corralled off, but good god, people. Our boss finally told them, “Our FIRST priority is making sure everyone is SAFE.”
(As for Sleepover Lady, we were closed for two days then)
Then there was the guy who asked me if the planetarium was where we kept the dinosaurs. Umm…
I learned a long time ago that the way to not sound stupid asking if someplace was open just because someone answered the phone was to ask “what are your hours today?”
Dinosaurs were on the planet at one time, weren’t they? Duh.
The funniest part is that we weren’t even the place that HAD the dinosaurs. All the fossils are at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. If actually stopped and looked at the Science Center – especially when you came inside – you’d realize there’s no freaking ROOM.
Oh, and my favorite – when Sports Works was being torn down, all fenced off (chainlink, construction signs, the whole big), people would STILL go over there and try to get in! And they’d come over to the main building. “Oh, is Sports Works open?” :smack:
Silly goose. Dinosaurs are kept in the Dinosaurium.
Just got off the phone:
Patron “Do you have [relatively obscure office-equipment type device]?”
Knead “No, I’m afraid we don’t.”
Patron “Does any branch have them?”
Knead “I really don’t believe so, no.”
Patron(slightly aghast) “Well the libraries where I used to live had them!”
Knead (in my head) “And you moved away from an Eden like that?”
Knead (out loud) “I’m sorry we can’t help you. I would recommend either Kinko’s or the UPS Store.”
I always love a good “No, I won’t do what you want me to do to fix the problem (over the phone). Just fix the problem for me!”.
With what now?
Had one of those an hour ago. And she was angry that the previous person hung up on her.
So did everybody here, courtesy of Tamex. 
I’ve probably told the story here before, but as I was working helpdesk at a college a few years ago, I got a call from a VP wanting CampusTech to come by immediately to reconnect his network drive. CampusTech was busy at the time with two teaching labs that were somehow broken. I explained to the VP that, by college policy, teaching labs were first priority, but we could remount his drive over the phone in about two minutes. No, no, he needed CampusTech! I stonewalled: CampusTech could come by when he had the labs fixed, or VP could do it himself right now. Eventually he caved in and followed my instructions to do it himself, in well under two minutes.
Damn, that felt good! (It helped that I knew the president of the college did nearly all of his own computer stuff, and he was the one who had set the lab policy. 
)
And again I see that original thought, like original sin, happened a long time ago to people I could not possibly have known.
Yup – I tip well and I routinely call managers over to compliment employees.
Let me counter with this: when I can’t get online, and call up my provider, almost always the tech support person wants me to disconnect my router and reconnect the computer directly with the modem. As it happens, I can’t do this. All of the wires and cables and THINGS are behind and under my desk, and I’m crippled up enough that I can’t get behind there and play unplug this and connect THAT for 15 minutes. When I explain that I have a mobility problem, all of a sudden the tech support person is able to solve my problem ANYWAY, without me having to swap cables. And the problem is solved. Every. Single. Time.
If I get the automated service, I am never directed to disconnect the router.
So yeah, just fix the damn problem already and don’t make me do stuff that’s totally unnecessary. Apparently the fix can be done on the company’s end in less than 10 minutes, and usually less than 30 seconds. I don’t mind rebooting the computer, or even turning it off for a few minutes. I’ve already disconnected the modem and router for a few minutes, before I even call tech support, because sometimes that’s all it takes to fix the problem, but I’ll do that again too. But I’m NOT going to crawl around and play with disconnecting the router when it seems that there’s a quick and easy solution that DOESN’T require me to get someone else to supervise me and make sure that I can get back on my feet again.
If your building is big enough to have a planetarium in it, it probably looks big enough to put some dinosaurs in it. Just sayin’.
Hell, I get this on my personal phone.
I blame Consumerist for this. They post the contact info for many corporate executives for the purpose of effective escalation of complaints, but the side effect is people often want to skip right to the top for no good reason.
That being said, Consumerist can be a good counterpoint to NotAlwaysRight, etc., providing stories of stupid companies.
Not just “for no good reason.” It’s often a very bad reason, like tech support. There are a lot of CEOs in large companies that could barely name all of their products, much less tell people how to use them. Escalating tech support to such a person would be like having a sales clerk at Wal-Mart fix your broken TV.
I stay at lots of small family owned hotels and motels and quite often the front desk is only open until 9 or 10PM, they are careful to let you know this when you make the reservation and will make some sort of “leave the key” arrangement if you have a reservation and are going to be late.
But if you just pull in late without a reservation you’re out of luck, the guest phones have an emergency number that goes to whichever of the owners is on call and they are usually a short drive away but not on premises.
One of the innkeepers, a really nice woman, showed me how to get to her house " in case you lock yourself out after hours"…but her place isn’t manned overnight.
And these are the nicer places, the resortlike ones. when it comes to motels most of them don’t even have an open front desk during the day…if have been there without a reservation and had to hit a half dozen or so establishments before I found one with an open front desk.
Well, it’s not so much the size, as the layout. (It’s moot, since that’s where I was laid off from)