Unfiltered Story #216739

(I work in an office answering phones for people who are interested in visiting the city. This conversation took place over our online chat system.)

Me: “Good afternoon, my name is [My Name]. How can I help you today?”

Visitor: “Hi I’m a student at ECPI Unervsity and im starting my externship and for my externship I need events in [City] from June to August I’m working with [Magazine] for externship I would appiecaite your help”

(Seriously, I just copy/pasted that from the chat transcript. I was a bit taken aback by the serious number of spelling and grammar errors, and the fact that this person referred to it as an “externship”, but of course I tried my best to help out.)

Me: “Of course. Have you looked at our calendar of events for those months?”

(I knew they had because the website told me that they were on that page, but I wasn’t sure what else to say because that’s the most comprehensive way to find all the events happening during those months.)

Visitor: *ignoring my question* “My email is [email address]”

Me: “I would be happy to send you some suggestions. Could I please have your full name and zip code as well?”

Visitor: *provides information* “or do you think it would be better to send it to [Magazine] with my name on it because it’s due by tommorow ”

(At that point I was a bit flabbergasted. Was this person just using me to do their assignment for them?)

Me: “Would you like me to send them directly to your email and you can forward it to [Magazine]?”

Visitor: “I just need three mouth of events, that would be find to send it to me than i’ll foward it on and thanks you just saved me from doom”

(Finally I took down his information, ended the chat, and sent the email. We have a program which lists all of our members and allows us to select which ones we want to recommend, then it converts those into an email format with all the information for the member. I added a bunch of theaters and event groups and prefaced the list with a note saying that the most popular summer events are X in June and Y in August. I figured that was that. A few minutes later, however, I received a chat from the same person.)

Visitor: “Hi my namne is [Name] I also need july as well it was for June July and August”

Me: “Hi [Name]. I didn’t mention any special events for July because nothing immediately came to mind when I was writing the email. If you check the calendar of events on our website or the listings on the sites of the events listed above, you will see that it includes things happening in July.”

Visitor: “okay thanks have a bless day”

(I was a bit baffled that someone who is in college could be so irresponsible as to not only leave a big assignment like that until the very last minute, but also lack the reading comprehension necessary to see that I’d included events for all three months. I felt a little bad afterward because they left me five stars in the post-chat survey, but still. I hope they take this as a lesson in managing their time, especially with an internship- or rather, “externship”.)