Back in the days of cable TV and satellite dishes (the early 1990s), I am a tech who is usually called to handle the more complicated issues. I get a call from a manager who works with my direct manager, who is retiring.

Manager: “We need you to do a hard reset on [Customer]. [Call Centre Manager] left a note on the account to specifically call you.”

I log in and see that it’s full of notes of the worst kind about this customer. Over the years, he has been abusive, racist, and sexist, but mostly homophobic. Every time he gets a male worker at the call centre, he calls them homophobic slurs of the vilest kind. How this customer’s account hasn’t been closed by now is beyond me.

Me: “Why? What happened here? His account is a mess.”

Manager: “It was [Call Centre Manager]. He seems to have… been creative on his last day before retirement last week.”

As I am friends with that old call centre manager, I call him and ask for an explanation.

Call Centre Manager: “I totally did not remote into a customer’s cable box with a generic tech support password, put in a parental lock, hide all channels except for a very nice adult entertainment channel, and then leave.”

Me: “I see. So, you absolutely did not leave this homophobic customer’s cable service locked into only, and absolutely only, the gay adult channel?”

Call Centre Manager: “I absolutely did not do that. No. See you at my retirement barbeque on Saturday?”

Me: “I’ll be there!”

I work as an advanced technician for a satellite TV company. I get the customers with repeated issues with their system, and most of them are rightfully frustrated and, to be fair, unpleasant to deal with.

I get a call from Texas, and the caller grudgingly goes through the troubleshooting steps. The end result is that a service call is needed.

I look up the first available appointment and see that it is over six weeks away. I audibly inhale, expecting a tirade of abuse.

No, the caller just laughs, says, “That’s harsh, buddy,” and takes the first appointment.

I work as a customer service representative under a prepaid debit card service. I got a call from a customer.

Customer: “I’m trying to pay the rent for my apartment, and my card keeps declining! Why?”

I brought up his account and looked at his transaction history. I saw that the cause of the decline was insufficient funds. Basically, he was $60 off from his $1,450 apartment transaction on his current balance at the time.

It turned out that a few hours before he could pay his rent, there was a previous charge from [Cable Company]. It was an auto payment that debited about $60 from his account, giving him a low balance. I told him the reason.

Customer: “What are you going to do about it, then? Refund me?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t refund you. The charge was from [Cable Company].”

It wasn’t my fault [Cable Company] had screwed him over.

He got pissed at me for not helping, although I told him there was nothing I could do in that situation, and after two foul language warnings, he hung up.

I mean, what did he want me to do? Tell [Cable Company] to refund him? That’s why I pay my bills manually — so I don’t get screwed over like that.

This happened some years ago when I worked for a small inbound call center that answered after-hours calls for many local businesses. One business was a branch of a cable company. We mostly just took calls during their lunches or after hours and only called out a technician if there was a problem or outage with local service.

This call happened on Super Bowl Sunday.

It was a mostly calm day with normal calls. I was on as Team Lead. Suddenly, our lines lit up. All of them were inbound calls for this cable company. It was instantly clear what had happened. The cable had gone out… right as the Super Bowl was starting.

I made a sudden decision that my team was NOT going to be screamed at. I yelled across the floor that no one was to answer any of those calls. Just pick them up and shunt them to our hold queue so we could get to other calls. I called the on-call technician.

Technician: “I KNOW! I KNOW! I GOT IT!”

With bated breath, we watched the call and hold count rise. Five minutes. Ten minutes. And then… silence and empty screens. The call count abruptly dropped to zero.

A single call rang into the cable company, and I took one for the team and answered it. It was the technician, sounding like he’d run a marathon.

Technician: *String of expletives not directed at me* “I got it. I’m gonna stay here for a bit and monitor it. Hope you ladies didn’t get s*** on too much.”

I haven’t a clue what actually went wrong, but kudos to that guy. The rest of the day went smoothly, and everyone was much happier we didn’t have to get screamed at by rabid sports fans.

Back in my cable TV days, one of my service technicians came back from a call. He and others had been there four times in four days. Each time the same story was the same.

Technician: “The screen goes blank at about 4:00 pm every day. When the customer walks up to the TV, the picture comes back on. When she backs away, the picture mysteriously disappears.”

Me: “What was it?”

Technician: “Well, of course, by the time we get there, she can’t replicate the problem.

Finally, on day four, I sit down at the end of her street. Like clockwork, her call comes in about at 4:00 pm. Dispatch radios the tech, and I show up at the house in seconds.”

Me: “She must have been shocked.”

Technician: “I just said I was in the area. She shows me how the picture is gone but the sound is on. She walks up to the TV, the picture comes back. She walks away from the TV, the screen goes blank.”

Me: “How did you fix it?”

Technician: “I walked up to the living room window and closed the curtains. The sun was shining on the screen and washed out the picture at the same time every day.”