Show Of Hands: Who’s Shocked By This Guy’s Results?

I work in a call center for a background screening company. My coworkers often ask to transfer calls to me because I can usually calm down the worst customers. Then, there’s this guy. It is shortly after my shift starts, so there are only a handful of us here as the others don’t start until later.

I get a call from a guy swearing up a storm. Ignoring that, I ask for his name so I can look him up and see where we are in the process. He just keeps swearing and screaming.

Me: “Sir, I will not tolerate that language. Either you calm down and tell me your name so I can see what’s going on with your screen, or I’m terminating the call.”

He keeps it up, so I hang up.

The guy calls back and I get him again. My call settings are such that I get more calls than others because I am fast and good at my job, averaging around 200 calls a day.

Guy: “The last f****** idiot I spoke to f****** hung up on me!”

Me: “Yes, sir, you spoke to me, and I advised you that if you didn’t stop swearing at me, I was terminating the call. Now, are you going to calm down and tell me your name, or am I terminating the call again?”

He starts dropping more F-bombs, so I terminate the call.

He calls again, rinse and repeat. The fourth time:

Me: “Sir, I want to help you, I really do, but you have to stop swearing and yelling, and you have to tell me your name so I can look you up in the system.”

Guy: “All right, all right. My name is [Guy].”

Me: “Okay, one moment while I call up your account.” *Does so* “Okay, could you please confirm for me [security questions]?”

Apparently, that is the wrong thing to ask because that sets him off again, but now, I have his account and can report him to management.

I hang up on him again, set my phone to “off”, and go to speak to my manager about him.

Manager: “Yeah, two other coworkers got him before you did the first time, and he upset them so much that they didn’t want to answer the phone in case he called back. If he calls again, send him directly to me.”

Then, my manager put out an urgent chat in Teams with all the customer service representatives telling them the same thing. He also flagged the guy’s account and let the prospective employer know how this guy was acting and treating the staff.

Had I been able to actually speak to him (if he answered the security questions), all I would have been able to tell him is that his report was incomplete and we were waiting for a response from two of his former employers. I would have asked if he could contact them and ask them to respond to us. Standard practice if we aren’t hearing back from the employers is to ask the applicant to reach out, because maybe there was a different person we should be sending our query to than what they originally gave us.

I could NOT tell him that he had failed his drug test and that our criminal search had found that he had two undisclosed misdemeanors. We weren’t allowed to tell customers anything negative about their accounts; we could only tell them if we were missing information we needed or that the reporting was complete. They could request a copy of their background screens free of charge.

I looked at the account a few days later; the employer marked him as not hired.