(I take a call. The other end sounds like a call centre.)

Me: “Hello?”

Telemarketer: *heavily accented* “Hello, my name is [Mispronounced Anglo-Saxon First Name].”

Me: “Of course it is…”

Telemarketer: “I’m calling from the United Kingdom County Council.”

Me: “I don’t know what to say. I mean, to find out this way that the UK has been downgraded from a country is rather shocking!”

(It’s near my birthday. My 87-year-old great grandma always gives me money, but she always sneaks it into my hand like it’s a secret.)

Me: “You always give me money like I’m some kind of drug dealer.”

Great Grandma: “Well, where are the drugs?”

Me: “I don’t have any drugs for you today.”

Great Grandma: “Aw, well. That’s too bad.”

(My two-month-old phone has suddenly and permanently frozen. As it’s still under warranty, I go to the store to replace it.)

Me: “Hello. My phone is broken.”

Employee: “Oh, dear. It is. Well, because it’s still under warranty, we’ll order a new one for you and notify you when it arrives in the shop.”

Me: “Really? That’s great. Thank you.”

(I fill out the forms and take my old broken phone home with me. About a month passes and I haven’t received a single letter or e-mail from the phone shop. I take an extra long break from work and run over there.)

Me: “Hi, sorry. I’m here about a replacement phone? Mine isn’t working, and hasn’t been working for a while.”

Employee: “Did you fill out the forms?”

Me: “I have them all here, along with my old phone.”

Employee: “Oh, this. Your phone came in about three weeks ago.”

Me: “Three weeks?! Why didn’t you notify me?”

Employee: “We did. We sent you a text message.”

Me: “…wait, what?”

Employee: “We texted you several times that your phone had arrived.”

Me: “You texted me? But my phone’s broken!”

Employee: “We sent you notification. I don’t understand why it took you so long—”

Me: “Ma’am, my phone is broken. How am I supposed to receive, let alone read a text message?! I can’t use my phone! That’s why I’m getting a new one! How was I supposed to know it had arrived?!”

(The employee pauses, thinks about it, then gives a huge shrug.)

Employee: “We sent you a message. You should have come sooner.”

Me: “May I please have your address?”

Customer: *confused* “Is that… on my bill somewhere?”

Me: “It’s usually on the front of your house.”

Me: “Hello. IT Help Desk. [My Name] speaking. How can I help?”

Caller: “Yes. I logged a job the other day. It’s been resolved already, so I’d just like to close it.”

(I proceed to take the reference number. I load the job up, thinking this will be a quick and easy call.)

Me: “Okay. That’s all sorted for you. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Caller: “Yes. I’d just like to ask. When I phoned the other day and logged this fault, someone came and fixed it five minutes later.”

Me: “Well I’m… glad to hear that?”

Caller: “No, but—why, when I wasted all that time trying to get through to you, did no one tell me it had already been logged?”

Me: “Unfortunately, ma’am, we have a dozen staff taking hundreds of calls from thousands of users. If you tell us there’s a fault to log we can only take your word for it.”

(This clearly wasn’t the right answer. The user gets more and more agitated.)

Caller: “Yes, but, don’t you keep track of these things? Can’t you keep track of all these jobs? Why couldn’t someone have told me?”

Me: “Ma’am, if you’d told us you didn’t know whether or not it was logged, we could’ve investigated. We could have spent time trying to ascertain if a call had already been made to us regarding the issue. We certainly couldn’t do that as a routine matter for every call we receive.”

Caller: “I just don’t understand why the person I spoke to didn’t know! My time is very valuable. I’m a very busy person. I wasted a lot of time on that call!”

(This goes back and forth for a while. We’re reaching the 10 minute mark.)

Me: “I can only apologise again that we were unaware your fault had already been logged before you called. However, with all due respect, you didn’t know either. It is your printer. Also, even if we had told you, your complaint was about the length of time it took you to get through. It was time you would’ve wasted whether or not we logged your duplicate call. Finally, ma’am, your complaint is that you wasted your valuable time speaking to IT unnecessarily. Yet you’ve been going around in circles about this with me for 10 minutes now. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to answer your question. I am happy to hear that we were able to resolve your issue so quickly, though.”

Caller: *click*