Fighting Fire With Silence

During my customer service days, one customer was being extremely verbally abusive to me, interrupting me when I attempted to answer her questions, and yelling at me for interrupting her — I thought she was done blabbering at me.

I finally snapped and muted my mic until:

Customer: “Are you still there?!”

I unmuted my mic.

Me: “Yes. I was simply doing as I was raised to do and waiting for you to finish speaking so I could answer the many questions you have. It is the polite thing to do.”

I used this same tactic on her six times during the call before she realized I would say that and start over until she let me actually finish talking. Quality and my bosses never said a thing about it.