Unfiltered Story #241951

In the late 1990’s, I worked for Montgomery Ward in Small Electronics and my sister worked at the Radio Shack in the next shopping center over, and we had this mutual difficult customer. We’ll call her Mrs. G. Answering the phone was always fun because she’d ignore our “hello” and start out with “Mrs.” and her husband’s name in a high-pitched piercing voice that always sounded like she was talking to low-born servants. And she *always* hung up on us, usually in a nasty mood (I don’t think she ever had a good mood).

One of my run-ins with Mrs. G over the phone was explaining how to connect a phone, an answering machine and a caller id at the same time, only she wanted to do it while I was talking to her, which was impossible, and cell phones were still relatively unknown for most people. Mrs. G bought everything over the phone and had us leave it with customer service/pick up. In my department, we all dreaded answering the phone when she called, and was so nasty to a coworker that *he* hung up on *her* and let our manager know. Of course she called and complained. When the credit card department called one day, to let us know that her husband had passed and she never reported it, and that the account had been closed. Unholy glee doesn’t even begin describing our delight that we didn’t have to deal with her anymore on the strength of her husband’s name. She wasn’t very pleased that the old store, which was a historic landmark in the company, it was so old, but became too unstable to stay standing, had to be taken down and a new store was built on the other end of the property. I helped close the old *&* new stores! I don’t think anyone likes change, really.

One of my sister’s experiences with her was a repaired turntable where the service charge was $40 and Mrs. G was determined that service charges didn’t exist. After a long argument of about 20 minutes, my sister finally said “Ok, the parts came to $40” and Mrs. G actually accepted that. I was *very* surprised when I heard that, especially as no one had gotten the drop on her before.

After Montgomery Wards closed and I started working elsewhere, and my sister no longer worked for Radio Shack, we had gone to get something at a different Radio Shack, and my sister was talking to her former colleague, one of the staff members told him that my sister’s old store was on the line there about this difficult old lady who was demanding something that couldn’t be done. My sister and I looked at each other and said, in unison, “Is it Mrs. G?” It was and we were both grateful we no longer had to cringe when we answered the phone and heard her voice. I felt sorry for the people working at my sister’s old store, but glad it wasn’t me. Or my sister.