Your examples of people throwing their weight around.

In my capacity as a member in good standing of Mother Stabbers, Father Rapers, and Telemarketers International I called a fellow in the UK who said he was, “very busy and important.” After much bowing and pulling my forelock I exited the conversation. Okay, not really, but since he did not wish to talk or buy anything I made an ungrovelish exit and went on to greener pastures, but not before I noted he lived in a town similar to my own Aurora, Illinois (see Wayne’s World), had a Gmail email account, used the cheapest web host he could find, and answered his own phone because he set up his account with us himself. Very busy and important? Color me unimpressed.

OTOH, email accounts don’t always tell everything. Had a customer who had another cheesy email account. I asked why someone who could afford our services would still have that email and was told that it was because he had written it. I guess he was nostalgic for what had made him vastly wealthy.

So, enough of my snobbery. Who has tried to throw his or her weight around without impressing you?

Donald Trump.

In fairness, dropsy, it really doesn’t take much to be too busy and important to listen to a telemarketer.

Rush Limbaugh. Huh huh huh.

When I was working in retail, it was absolutely amazing how many people were close friends with the owner of the shop. I worked in a couple of big chains, but I also worked at a couple of very small chains, and the owners always had a lot of very close friends, who were supposed to be given an excellent discount, or were supposed to be allowed to have things on credit.

It was kind of fun to sing out “Hey Bernie, here’s one of your friends come to buy this thing!” And then see Bernie come up and ask just WHO the hell the customer was? And the would-be scammer would get that deer-in-the-headlights look, when s/he realized that this was, indeed the owner, and the bluff/scam wasn’t working.

I work in a doctor’s office. We get a lot of doctor’s wives (not even the wives of the doctors that work there) that think that they are important. Also, some patients think they deserve special treatment because they’re “good friends of Joe”, when if they were actually good friends with him, they’d know that he goes by Jay.

While flirting w/ a doorman-bouncer at a dueling piano bar in the 90’s (hope those 2 things explain each other) I watched an off-duty cop try to get in (for free) while the place was still at capacity by showing his badge. His date was mortified.

Ah, but he did not yet KNOW I was a telemarketer. I could have been the ghost of Ed McMahon telling him he had won a million pounds.

Speaking of ghosts, my wife works in customer service (I make crank calls and she receives crank calls) and a surprising number of callers are so angry with the service they got in a store that they want to tell their good golf buddy, the founder of the chain. Too bad the store doesn’t sell Ouija boards because that’s usually the best way to talk to guys who died some years back.

I did phone support for a software company for a while. The software involved some legal stuff, so among other security checks it required the customer’s computer to be set to the correct time. If it was more than three minutes different from our servers, it threw a (perfectly appropriate) fit.

One day I got a call from a nice young guy whose very loud boss was standing right behind him listening to the call. The boss was being an absolute dick, frequently cutting the guy off and dictating what he was to say to me. Once we narrowed down the cause of the issue, I explained to the young man that he needed to correct his clock to the right time zone. His boss exploded. “You mean all this trouble is because a clock isn’t accurate?! We’re a bank! You can’t get more accurate than that!”

There are very, very few people who are suited to work in call centers. For most people, myself included, it’s hell. My job paled in comparison to that guy’s, though.

The obviously correct answer is Sumo Wrestlers.

Years ago worked in a newspaper using a particularly antiquated server for the newsroom and classified departments. Antiquated to the point there were two people in the country who supported it.
It breaks, the guy who handles east of the Mississippi flies in, is the office about 20 minutes trying to figure out what the problem is.
Boss comes up to him: “When is it going to be working?”
Repairman: “Don’t know, haven’t figured out what exactly is broken yet.:”
Boss: “You don’t seem to understand this is critical to getting this newspaper out. I need to know RIGHT NOW when it will be functioning.”
Now keep in mind the only place this system was used was newspapers.
After about 20 minutes of boss huffing and puffing and getting no where he stormed off. I apologized to the repairman who said “I don’t care, I get paid $100 an hour whether I’m fixing it or arguing with him.”

Time for Chris Christie joke yet?

I have answered several 9-1-1 calls from “friends” of the Commissioner of Police. After properly prioritizing their calls they are queued for dispatch. If things are busy then low priority events (say the Commissioner’s friend’s parking lot accident with no injuries) have to wait while high priority events (say domestic violence with weapons involved) are handled first.

The self-important “friends” of the Commissioner end up calling back (repeatedly) to let us know an officer has not yet arrived. Eventually their irritation rises to the point of making threats to have the Commissioner fire me. Good luck.

The governor and the country’s Premier apparently have several impatient self-important friends as well.

However, the people in our community who legitimately have the sort of connections to use don’t do so to influence emergency services. Every single time I have had any call from anyone with name recognition who has influence they have been cooperative, polite, and responsive.

Many years ago, I was in charge of pushing our company through ISO9001 certification.* Getting the company certified was a big goal, and I had to get a lot of people to volunteer their efforts and to take a role in the oversight positions that would ensure that it got done. My idea was to make these positions temporary, and rotate them around the company, so that the pain and inconvenience was averaged out – everybody would take a turn “at bat”, so that jnobody got stuck with a permanent onerous job.

Only, after the firs successful certification, people started throwing their importance out as a reason they should be exempted. “No, I shouldn’t have to do that. I’m too important” was the gist of this. Right, I’d think, So what does that make ME, then? I have to run this stupid enterprise.

Shortly after the second follow-up audit, I left the company. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the next audit didn’t happen.

*The job “devolved” upon me, because everyone above me in the food chain who had any responsibility for it quit the company. I wanted to make sure the company passed on my watch.

When I was working in dental insurance, had an angry caller who made a point of telling me he was a retired executive with a rather large company (canned foods). I didn’t say anything rude, but was thinking how totally unimpressive someone playing the “I’m this really important big-shot” card is to me.

Once I got his difficulty straightened out (a denied claim due to having hit his annual limit), he turned out to be a rather nice person (even apologized for his behavior at the start of the conversation), which impressed me a lot more. :slight_smile:

“I am very busy and important.” is a quote from the Bridget Jones film. I know a few English people who use it to be funny.

Nah, telemarketers are pretty easy to spot. You received a mild insult, but did not realize it, because you are a telemarketer.

While on a call someone once tried to influence how I was doing my job (he was a third uninvolved party) by telling me “I’m an elected official!” Since I knew who all the councilmen were and he certainly wasn’t the mayor I asked who he was. He was a member of the Board of Education. I said “comgratultions” and ignored him completely. The arrogant prick was voted out the next election.

We had a server crash the other day. One of the supervisors called and bitched about how this was slowing down her productivity and how we needed to send out notifications in advance of a crash so she could make provisions for it.