Having A Flight Of Fancy

(I work at a call centre for a well-known airline.)

Me: “Hello, thank you for calling [Airline]. How can I help?”

Customer: “Hello, I’d like to change my flight; reference is [random succession of numbers].”

Me: “Okay, the number you have provided is not a [Airline] reference. Did you book through a travel agent or third party website?”

Customer: “No, it’s actually a reference for [Different Airline]. Can’t you change it? You all fly planes anyway.”

Me: “I’m very sorry, sir, but we operate on an in-house system only used by this airline. I cannot change another airline’s booking through our system. You will need to call the airline direct. Would you like me to try and locate a number?”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! Where is your customer service? I have never had my intelligence insulted so badly. Where is your manager? I’ve done something wrong on my booking and it NEEDS to be changed. Change my booking now!”

Me: “Sir, I’m afraid we are very busy today and our managers are busy dealing with customers of our airline. You will need to call the airline you made the booking with and they will be able to change it for you. Was there anything else?”

Customer: “I will write to your CEO and complain! This is ridiculous. Change my f****** booking right now or I’ll call your manager and get you fired! Where is your customer service, you uneducated p***k?! I am telling you right now, CHANGE MY BOOKING! You all fly F****** PLANES! YOU. FLY. PLANES. It can’t be that f****** hard! I am not calling another airline’s PREMIUM RATE NUMBER when your number is free and you can do it anyway!”

Me: “Ah, so the problem is you don’t want to pay. Well then, sir, in future I suggest checking the price to call before you make a mistake on a booking in future. Now if you don’t mind, I have customers of THIS airline to attend to. Goodbye.”

(I could almost feel him having a mini-aneurism through the phone, along with his white-hot rage at being wrong. Don’t you just love customers?!)