Needs To Get His Fax Straight

(We are a small library without a public fax machine. We have a private business fax machine for office use only. We still get spam faxes because the number is publicly listed.)

Me: “Well, I was going to send the weekly report to accounting but something is coming in on the fax.”

Coworker: “Ooooh, is it another offer for a discount trip to Bermuda?”

Me: “It’s some financial thing. Man, it’s eight pages long. Woah. This is someone’s debt consolidation paperwork.”

Coworker: “What? Is it for someone who works here?”

Me: “No… but they apparently live in town.”

(I attempt to call the customer multiple times as a courtesy, but their voice-mail inbox is full. They show up the next day anyway.)

Customer: “Hi. So, uh you should have some papers for me?”

Me: “Did you have your financial institution use the library’s fax line?”

Customer: “No, it was their idea. They say they do that for a lot of customers.”

Me: “Ok. You need to explain to them that isn’t appropriate. Our fax machine is for library business only. I actually thought your fax was spam at first because we weren’t expecting anything. It could have been shredded. It’s also not very secure. We have volunteers and maintenance staff coming and going all the time and we don’t guard the fax machine because we don’t normally receive sensitive documents. We had to look over these papers just to figure out what they were and there is information on here that we did not need to know about you, like your social security number. We couldn’t reach you to warn you either. If you had contacted us first we could have told you not to use our fax.”

Customer: “Oh… so, like, does that mean I can’t send my paperwork back through you guys?”

Me: “You may not. There is a pay-fax machine at the copy shop across town. Please inform the company not to use our fax again. Any other paperwork that is sent will be shredded.”

(The customer shrugged and left. I’m still not sure I got through to them. At the very least I know never do business with that debt consolidation company!)