I worked as a tier-two representative in a call center. My primary job was to take escalations and irate customers. We were not allowed to hang up on a customer unless they directly threatened us.

We had a promo running where, if you bought a certain item set, you would get an extra item for free, but you had to purchase the entire set.

I got a heads-up from a representative that they had an extremely angry customer who wanted to talk to a manager.

Me: “Hi, I’m one of the service managers. I got a brief description of your concern, but I would prefer to hear from you what’s going on.”

Caller: “I have PTSD and a heart condition; if you don’t give me what I want, you could give me a heart attack.”

Me: “Um, okay. Well, let’s see what the problem is, and I’ll do my best to help.”

Caller: “I bought items [items #1, #2, and #3] and did not get my free item.”

Me: “Sir, unfortunately, that is because you must buy [items #1, #2, #3, and #4] to qualify for that promotion.”

The free item was pricey — over $150 — so if he didn’t buy the whole set, it almost put us below cost for the set.

Caller: “I don’t care; I want the free item.”

Me: “I can offer a $25 discount on the set, but again, I am not able to give you the item for free as you do not qualify.”

Caller: “I want the item now, or I will call and talk to your boss and your boss’s boss.” 

Me: “Let me put you on hold for a minute and see if there is anything else I can do.”

Caller: “If you can’t get me what I want, I want to talk to your boss.”

I mute him and talk to my boss, who is now listening in on the conversation.

Me: “Listen, I don’t think this guy’s going to back down. I am going to give him $50 altogether, but what do I do if he doesn’t back off?”

Boss: “Do not give him the product; he does not qualify. He is not a long-time customer, and he made the rep before you cry.”

Me: “All right, but I don’t think he’s gonna give up.”

Back to the caller.

Me: “All right, sir, I’ve worked it out to where the best I can do is $50 off your order. I am not able to give you that other item for free.”

Caller: *Now screaming like a toddler* “I told you that if you couldn’t give me the item, you should put me on with your manager! All I want to hear is ‘yes’!”

Me: “Sir, I am—”

Caller: “‘Yes’! Only ‘yes’!”

Me: “I am trying to—”

Caller: “YES, YES, YES, YES! That’s all I want to hear! Put on your manager, put on your manager, put on your manager!”

Me: “Let me see if he’s available.”

I mute the customer.

Boss: “I am not talking to him; he isn’t getting the item, period.”

I unmute the customer.

Me: “Sir, I spoke to my team here, and unfortunately, there is no way we can work out to get you this item unless you buy the complete set.”

Caller: *Actually screaming louder* “Get me your manager! I said to say ‘yes’! I said to say ‘yes’!”

This run-around, with him screaming like a child and swearing and losing it and me apologizing and trying to work him back to the $50, goes on for almost fifteen minutes.

Finally, I put him on hold again and look at my boss.

Me: “Listen. Either you’re going to talk to this guy, or I’m going to give him the d*** item. What would you prefer?”

Boss: “I’m not talking to him. Just deal with it.”

At this time, blaming the lack of support from my own management, I put in the order for the new item.

Me: “Sir, I pulled some strings and am sending out the item. It will ship today and arrive on [date]. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Caller: “I told you to just say yes! Now I have to call the ambulance! You’ve f****** killed me! I hope you’re happy!” *Hangs up*

I triple-checked the order, put a high-priority flag on his account, and watched it for a few days until the crazy guy signed for it. I didn’t want there to be any issues or to have to talk to him again. 

Since then, I have been promoted, and I am the end of the line for customers like this. I have never let one of them get their way like this ever again.

A gentleman in his eighties said he needed help signing into his retirement account. Not only did he not have an account, but he’d never used a computer before. In fact, he bought a computer just to access his retirement account.

I talked him through every step, including helping him power up and access a browser, and teaching him what a mouse looked like and how to use it.

He took notes every step of the way and repeated them back to me, apologizing often and saying I must think he was stupid because I was so knowledgeable. I reassured him that everything’s easy once you know how.

It took well over an hour, but he was able to create an account and sign in. Once there, I asked him what he wanted to see. He was somewhat surprised and told me:

Caller: “You sent me a postcard that said to sign in today.”

And we had. We mailed a postcard to every account holder, and it did indeed say, “Sign in Now!” So, he bought a computer in order to follow our instructions.

I asked him if he ever wondered how holidays affected his payment date. Yes! Let’s go look! He was able to follow my instructions to navigate to that page, and when he saw it, it took his breath away.

Caller: “Oh, wouldya lookit that!”

I took him on a tour of the pages that would answer common questions. He sounded delighted at each new page, and I could hear the catch in his voice when he thanked me.

I am working at a call center when I hear some shouting at the entrance to the office. I see my manager running up to a group of firefighters.

Firefighter: “Why are you all still here?! The building is being evacuated!”

I am confused. I haven’t heard any alarms or anything.

Manager: “It’s just a false alarm, right? These things are never real!”

Wait… the manager knew something was up?

Firefighter: “We’re here to assess that threat! Someone called in a bomb threat! Why are you all still here?!”

Manager: “Look, just do what you need to do, and if you find a bomb, then we’ll evacua—”

Firefighter: “Out! Now! Get out, you unbelievable moron!”

The firefighter actually smashes one of his pieces of equipment against the wall, making a huge sound. I apologize to my caller, hang up, and start walking out.

Manager: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Away from the f****** bomb!”

Manager: “If you walk out now, you’ll be—”

Me: “I’ll be alive, you tw*t!”

The rest of the office left, and only then did we realize the whole building had been evacuated twenty minutes earlier! It turned out to be a false alarm, and my manager was all “I told you so,” but then when he tried to get me into trouble, I asked why none of us had heard the evacuation alarm.

It turned out that a small group of managers had found a way to mute the alarm for our floor, which is super illegal. They were not only fired but charged with endangering over thirty workers.

Last I heard, they were all doing prison time, just because they didn’t want the dent in their numbers that would risk their end-of-year bonuses.

Toward the end of my time at my airline, I was offered the opportunity to work temporarily in Ticketing rather than my usual job of handling Business Class passengers and frequent flyers. I was offered the opportunity because I had taken a training class in basic ticketing and most people had not had any ticket training. There were only six people in ticketing, and one of them was going on Maternity Leave for several months, leaving them very short-handed.

At the time, electronic tickets were just starting to be used by our airline, and if the trip involved both us and another airline, the tickets had to be paper. Our department also helped the airport ticket people who seemed to frequently have problems issuing tickets.

To start with, I didn’t have anything to do with tickets. For my first couple of weeks, I was assigned one of their other peripheral duties which was processing the collection of change fees. This was very simple to do and took almost no training. The backlog for it was really bad. The people in ticketing had been too busy with other duties to do this task for some time. There were definitely some people who had made changes to their tickets and been told they had to pay a change fee but had traveled before we got around to trying to collect the fee. The system did not allow the change fees to be collected after travel, so some people got very lucky.

But that’s not what my story is about; it’s just backstory.

After doing just this for about ten days, the department manager came to talk to the three of us on duty just as two of us were about to leave. This was a Friday night at about 6:00. He informed us that two of the other people in ticketing had been let go effective immediately That left the three of us plus one other person, who was off that day.

I was scheduled in at 9:00 the next morning, and one of the people who had been let go had been scheduled to come in at 8:00. So, suddenly, I was going to be there on my own with really no knowledge of what I was supposed to be doing. The next person wasn’t scheduled until 2:00 in the afternoon.

I was going, “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about issuing tickets or helping the airports with their issues!”

The manager, for whatever reason, was sure I would be fine while I was having a panic attack just thinking about it. My coworker, who was the one scheduled in at 2:00, handed me her phone number and said I could call her with any problems that came up and couldn’t wait.

And of course, there were a couple of calls from the airports that I had no idea how to handle. I called my coworker, but all she could do was talk to the airport and talk them through it. For the second problem, I couldn’t even get through to her, so I had to tell the airport to call back.

My only salvation came at about 12:30 when another coworker came in who used to work in ticketing, and she offered to help me out with anything she could.

Finally, at 2:00, the other ticket agent came and handled things for the rest of the day while I went back to the only thing I was trained for

 I was off the next two days, and when I came back, the manager had rearranged the schedule so I was no longer on my own. He quickly set about finding other people to work in ticketing. I took the training to become a full-fledged ticketing agent, and they brought over someone from “employee travel” who could issue tickets. A couple of months later, after I had been trained, the manager decided that he liked my work better than hers and let her go even though she had a lot more experience.

The coworker on Maternity Leave came back, and all was well again.

I work in a call center for a bank. Every customer who calls us must answer a few verification questions. If they hang up or answer wrong, we need to block their access to the call center assuming it was an attempt to use someone else’s account. Then, if they call again, every employee will see that their access to the call center is denied, and to do anything with their account, the caller has to personally go to the branch to unblock the access.

One time, I was talking to a very rude customer who demanded that everything be done immediately.

Me: “I will happily do everything you’ve asked for, but first, you need to answer some verification questions.”

He started yelling even louder, called me names, said I was unprofessional, and hung up.

So, I blocked all of his accesses. Now, he will be forced to go to the branch to unblock it, and only then he will be able to do what he wants. And oops, he mentioned that he was abroad and couldn’t go to the branch, which is why he’d called us.

He thought I was unprofessional, so I made sure I did everything according to our procedures, so he should be satisfied.

My dear customer, enjoy not being able to use your money for a looong time!