Me: “Thank you for calling ****, how may I direct your call?”

Lady: “Can I get your Orient kitchen?”

(I put her on hold, page the kitchen. 30 seconds later, the phone rings.)

Me: “Thank you for calling ****, how may I direct your call?”

Same lady: “Yeah, I was holding for the Orient kitchen, I think I got disconnected.”

Me: “Just a sec.”

(I put her on hold again, page the kitchen again. 30 seconds later, phone rings again.)

Me: “Thank you for calling ****, how may I direct your call?”

Same lady: “You keep hanging up on me! Every time I call for the kitchen, you hang up on me.”

Me: “Ma’am, I am putting you on hold.”

Lady: “No, you keep hanging up on me. You say hold and then there’s silence.”

Me: “If I was hanging up on you, you would hear a dial tone. The silence is you being on hold. So if you wait a minute, I will get the kitchen for you.”

Lady: “Okay.”

Me: “Now, there is going to be silence. This isn’t me hanging up on you. You are being put on hold. Just wait and someone will pick up the phone. ”

Lady: “Thank you.”

(I put her on hold and turn to see my co-workers laughing at me behind my back. I question the state of humanity.)

(Where I work, all cashiers are taught to ask how the customer’s day was, and if they found everything alright. Simple, easily answered and pleasant…usually.)

Me: “How is your day, ma’am?”

Customer: *quite happily* “It’s great, I can’t complain.”

Me: “That’s good, did you find everything okay today?”

Customer: *suddenly angry* “NO, I couldn’t find product X or product Y, nor did you have any of product Q in stock, so far in the past three weeks of me shopping here, I have come in and you haven’t had ANY in stock!”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry about that, I could get a manager over and see if we could solve this prob–”

Customer, cutting me off: “NO, this is absolutely unacceptable! I guess I’m just going to have to go to competitor A from now on!”

Me: “I’m very sorry about that, ma’am.”

Customer: “YOU should be, it’s YOUR paycheck!”

Me: …

(I’m standing behind my counter when a man comes up to me with a prepaid phone and airtime card in his hand.)

Me: “Can I help you sir?”

Customer: “I wanna buy this.”

(I usually make people tell me what they want before I just “hop to.”)

Me: “That’ll be $63.55.”

Customer: *sets check down in front of me* “Just fill that out for me.”

Me: *thinking about writing a check for $20 over for a tip*

Related:
The Problem With Blank Checks

(I worked tech support for a major software company, specifically with their digital media products. This call was about their video editing software.)

Me: “Thanks for calling ***** tech support.

(The customer gives me her info and has a thick accent I can’t place.)

Me: “Great! What can I do for you?”

Her: “Yes. I am trying to edit dees beedio, and eet’s blue and blue on de ting.”

Me: “So…it’s blue, and blue…on the thing?”

Her: “Yes.”

Me: “Where is it blue?”

Her: “On de ting.”

Me: “By ‘thing,’ do you mean the Computer screen or your camera?”

Her: “Yes…de ting.”

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t see what you are looking at so you’ll have to tell me the name of the thing that is blue.”

Her: *getting angry* “DE TING!!! Eeet’s BLUUUUE AN BLUUUEE ON DE TING!!!!”

Me: “What exactly is blue? The video on your monitor? Are you outputting to TV? The viewfinder on your camera?”

Her: “Yes.”

Me: “Yes…which one?”

Her: *yelling* “DE TING!!!!”

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry but I don’t understand where you are having a problem.”

Her: “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!! I SPEAK PERFECT ENGLISH!!! MY HUSBAND TAUGHT ME HE WILL BE VERY VERY ANGRY WIT YOU!!! I DEMAND RESPECT!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!”

Me: “Ma’am, I agree. You speak english very very well. The problem I am having is you are not telling me where you are seeing blue video.”

Her: “ON DE TIIIING!!!”

(This exchange went on for a while before she got frustrated and hung up. The best part is, my call was being listened to by some higher level support guys. They created an internal troubleshooting document that appeared as follows:)

(And so on and so on…)

From the Not Always Right store:

De Ting (retro) Tee

De Ting (techno) Tee

Me: “Thank you for calling guest relations. This is ******* speaking. How may I help you?”

Customer: “Yes. One of your hotels stole something from me and I would like you to return that item to me or I will sue you.”

Me: “We will certainly conduct an investigation. What property was it left at?”

Customer: “The Holiday Inn.”

Me: “Ok…what city and state?”

Customer: “The Holiday Inn!!!!”

Me: “I understand which brand name…can you please tell me the location of the property?”

Customer: “It’s on Bradford.”

Me: “Ok, and what city and state is that in?”

Customer: “By the ocean.”

Me: “Ok….which city and state?”

Customer: “Florida. It’s not my job to tell you where it’s located…”

Me: “Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, we have over 3,000 properties in the US alone. So I will need you tell me which City in Florida this is located…”

(Customer provides name of city.)

Me: “Ok great. And this is the Holiday Inn on Bradford, correct? So what is missing?”

Customer: “I don’t know.”

Me: “You don’t know?”

Customer: “No. I visited my psychic this week, and she told me that one of the employees at that hotel where I just came from this past weekend, stole something from me. The employee is female with dark hair and her name starts with an ‘M’.”

Me: “Ok….but can you tell me what you’re missing please? That way I can have this documented and the hotel can investigate the situation.”

Customer: “I DON’T KNOW WHAT WAS STOLEN BUT MY PSYCHIC DOES NOT LIE.”

Me: “Ma’am, I certainly apologize for any inconvenience experienced…but I’m sure you can appreciate that I would need to know what was taken to forward over to the hotel. Have you gone through your items?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “And?”

Customer: “I can’t find anything. But your hotel better return my items or I will sue you!”

Me: “I’d love to help you. Please call us back when you have discovered what was missing. Thank you.”

Me: “Thank you for calling ***** Vision, how may I help you?”

Caller: “I need someone to come look at my TV.”

Me: “Sir, this is a vision insurance company, not television repair.”

Caller: “When can you send someone out?”

Me: “Sir, we cannot do that. We don’t repair TVs.”

Caller: “I WANNA SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR!”

Me: “He can’t help you either, sir.”

Caller: “F**K YOU! I SAY F**K YOU!” *click*

Woman: Excuse me, I’ve lost my child somewhere in the store.

Me: “Okay, I’ll get someone right away.”

(I call in a code yellow.)

Me: “Okay, how old is your child?”

Woman: “She’d just turned three. Ooohhh, what if she’s been kidnapped?”

Me: “Don’t worry, I’m sure that’s not the case.”

(Security comes up to talk to her and she turns around.)

Security: “Ma’am, how many children do you have?”

Woman: “Just one, why?”

Security: “Because your child is on your back.”

(She was wearing one of those harnesses.)

Old man: “I need a new phone! But I don’t want all those fancy bells and whistles on it!”

Me: “Ok, well we have some more basic phones over–”

Old man: “No I don’t want caller ID!”

Me: “Hmm…well all the phones we carry have caller ID on them. It’s a pretty standard feature nowadays.”

Old man: “Yeah but I don’t have that service, so I’d just be wasting my money on a feature I don’t use!”

(This sort of this goes on for about 10 minutes. At one point another customer enters the aisle doing her own shopping. He looks over my shoulder and yells to her “Go find someone else! He’s helping me right now!”)

(Finally he decides on a phone…)

Old man: “Does this one have a wall mount?”

Me: “Yes sir, it’s wall mountable.”

Old man: “Show me!”

Me: “We can’t really open product-”

Old man: “No, show me!”

(I think, “Screw it,” and open the box and take everything out to show him)

Me: “See? Wall mounts.”

Old man: “Ok fine, I’ll take it.”

(I spend 10 minutes trying to get the freaking phone back in the box exactly how it was packaged, which is a lot harder than it sounds.)

Me: “Ok…here you go.”

Old man: “No, I don’t want that one, it’s been opened!”

(I nearly beat him to death with his cane.)

Customer on phone: “I’d like a delivery please.”

Me: “Sorry, we don’t deliver.”

Customer: “I thought you delivered.”

Me: “Sorry, we don’t.”

Customer: “Well, do I get some kind of compensation?”

Me: “Uhhh, no…”

Customer: “You mean I was inconvenienced for all this time and I don’t even get a f***ing discount?”

Me: “No…”

Customer: *click*

Customer: “I got just back from my vacation and all of a sudden my internet connection isn’t working anymore. Have you got a technical problem in my area or something.”

Me: “No ma’am, as far as I know there aren’t any problems at this moment. Can you check which status lights are burning on your modem?”

(Now this is a standard check we do to troubleshoot; it’s very easy to tackle when something’s going wrong.)

Customer: “Alright, well, all lights are off. Are you sure there couldn’t be a problem on your side?”

Me: “No miss, there aren’t any problems. I checked it when you were checking the status lights. But they were all off, you said?”

Customer: “Yeah, there wasn’t a light burning on my modem. What could that mean?”

Me: “Well, that could mean two things: Either the modem is broken or…”

Customer: “No, it can’t be broken, it’s almost brand new! You just want me to buy a new one so that it’s not your problem anymore, am I right?”

Me: “Well, to be honest: You’re not. I didn’t even finish my sentence yet. I said the modem COULD be broken, and if it’s broken and still brand new you’ll get a new one. The problem could also be that the power plug isn’t connected to the outlet properly. Maybe you’ve forgotten to plug it in after you came home from your holiday?”

Customer: “Are you implying that I’m so dumb that I’d forget that? It’s just broken so send me a new one!”

Me: “No, I’m not. But could you please check it, just to be sure?”

Customer: “Alright then…”

(After a minute.)

Customer: “Yeah, you were right, it wasn’t connected. But I’m sure this could happen to everyone!”

Me: “I suppose so. Have a nice day!”