Unfiltered Story #97593

<i>(I work the admissions/gift shop in an art gallery in Province 1. There is a university in the same city who has a restoration going on, and last year they were selling calendars to raise money for said project; ours was one of the locations who was carrying them. One day, I get this phone call:)</i>

<b>Me:</b> [Name of Gallery], how may I help you?

<b>Customer:</b> I saw on CBC that University is selling calendars to restore Building. Are you selling them?

<b>Me:</b> Yes, we are.

<b>Customer:</b> I live in Province 2. Would you be able to ship one to me?

<b>Me:</b> <i>(stunned for a moment, as we had never done this before; I had only been working there a few months).</i> Um… I’ll have to check with my supervisor. May I have your name and number and I’ll call you back? <i>(the phone has caller ID, but it was coming up Private Name & Private Number)</i>

<b>Customer:</b> I don’t give out my phone number. How about you give me her number and I’ll call her?

<b>Me:</b> Okay, no problem! <i>(I give her the number, and after we hang up I give my supervisor a heads-up about the call.

Fast-forward a few weeks later, and the following has taken place:
We do agree to send the calendar, but the payment has to be processed from my station upstairs. As we can’t call the customer to have her give us the credit card number in real time, she instead told it to my supervisor, who wrote it down, and then brought it up the next day to have it done. The card number is declined. We have no way of calling the customer, so we decided to wait it out. She eventually calls back.)</i>

<b>Customer:</b> I had ordered a University calendar some time ago. When should I be expecting it to arrive?

<b>Me:</b> Well, unfortunately, we couldn’t finish processing the payment as your card number was declined, and as we had no way of contacting you, we had no way of rectifying this.

<b>Customer:</b> Well, you had my address? You could have sent me a letter! <i>(she is now clearly upset)</i> This is the problem with Province 1! You’re always dropping the ball when it comes to business! My family was from there and can be traced back–! <i>(goes on for a bit of how it’s all our fault and we should have sent her a letter, because, of course, WE’RE the ones dropping the ball when she was perfectly ready to give us her credit card number but not her phone number when nearly the whole world runs on phone lines and the Internet, but, no, WE should have sent HER a letter).</i>

I am eventually able to end the call with an apology and “hope you have a nice day.” Once my supervisor come out of a meeting she was in, I tell her what happened, and both her and another office staffer agree that the customer was probably trying to get a free calendar.