On Monday morning, I get this call:

Caller: “There’s a $300 overdraft on my account! How did that get there?!”

Me: “Whatever you buy during the weekend does not get subtracted from your account until the next business day, which is today, Monday.”

Caller: “But I had money in my account on Friday!”

Me: “Ma’am, I am seeing your end-of-business-day balance, which is whatever you had in your account Friday after the processing cutoff. It was $86.”

Caller: “Yes! See?!”

I then confirm that her weekend purchases of a 120-dollar dinner, seventy-nine bucks in a club, and $200 at a fancy retail store are valid. They are.

Me: “Ma’am, if you knew you only had $86, you should not have spent so much money during the weekend.”

Caller: “It’s your fault for letting me spend so much money! You need to ensure that all overdraft fees be reimbursed because you should have stopped me from making those purchases!”

Caller: “I need you to move the satellite that’s near my son’s bedroom window.”

Me: “Can I have your account information?”

Caller: “I don’t have an account. It’s my neighbor’s satellite dish.”

Me: “Please have your neighbor call in if they want it moved, and we can move it.”

Caller: *Angry* “No! You have to move it now! The rays are coming in from the dish and giving my son autism!

I tried to tell her that the dish is a receiver and doesn’t emit anything, but she didn’t believe me. Big surprise.

I have just helped a caller get their Internet back up and running — a simple case of resetting their router.

Caller: “Thank you for bringing back the Internet!”

Me: “I’m glad I could help, sir.”

Caller: “Should someone tell everyone else?”

Me: “Tell them what?”

Caller: “That the Internet is working again?”

Me: “Oh, no, we only needed to fix your Internet.”

Caller: “You mean everyone else still doesn’t have Internet?! How silly!” *Click*

Related:
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 4
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 3
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 2
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet

I was working in a call center. During one of our “slow periods”, my coworker was talking about her oil painting hobby. Because art is an interest of mine, I later said to her:

Me: “I would love to see your paintings. Do you have pictures of them?”

She looked at me like I had just asked her for a date in front of her husband.

Coworker: “Say that again?”

Me: “Do you have pictures of your paintings?”

The woman turned her head with a “Can you believe the nerve of him?” look on her face. Thinking that she was upset about me listening in on her conversation about her hobby, I felt myself turn red as I quietly returned to my desk and mentally berated myself for not minding my own business.

The following morning, I received an email requesting me to report immediately to the human resource manager’s office. I’d actually had a very good working relationship with her over the previous seven years, and at one point, she had helped me get transferred to another project when I had expressed a growing amount of dissatisfaction with the one I was on. I had no worries at all about being summoned to her office.

The HR manager greeted me with a warm smile and asked me to take a seat. Then, she produced what I recognized as a complaint form for employees.

Manager: “Yesterday, you approached [Coworker] and asked her a question. Could you clarify for the record what that was?”

Me: *Seriously confused* “She was talking to someone about her painting hobby, and I asked her if I could see her paintings sometime. I asked if she had any pictures of them—”

Manager: “UGH!” *Tosses her pen on her desk* “Thank you. That’s all.”

Me: “Okay?” *Slowly getting up*

Manager: “You’re good. You can go back to work. Thanks for coming in.”

As I was walking down the hall, I heard her yell, “He said PAINTINGS, not PANTIES, you idiot!” followed by the sound of a phone receiver slamming down.

I worked for a call center that serviced a direct-mail program for mass-market romance novels — you know, the kind that you usually see near supermarket checkouts. The publisher would take out ads in magazines for a free month’s subscription with three to six books, depending on the series, with a gift — most often trinket boxes or cheap glassware you might find at a dollar store. Most callers were paying invoices in those days before e-commerce was the thing it is now; very often, we’d get complaints about service or content.

A little old lady called one day asking to talk to someone about her free month of books within a certain series that included graphic sexual scenes. It was nothing illegal or kinky, just sex within the typical romance formula. I braced myself for the onslaught; I fully expected an uptight old church lady to ream me out for peddling smut. I was pleasantly surprised when she said she would like to continue her subscription.

Lady: “I’m seventy-eight years old, and every month I go to the seniors’ dance at the VFW hall. I like to take home a nice gentleman, and we read the books together and act them out.”

And she proceeded to give me, in excruciating detail, an account of her last night out where she picked up a retired fireman and what she did to his “little helmet.” And because I knew my boss would hand my tuchas to me if I laughed or showed any emotion, I was a captive audience for live granny smut.

I went home and got smashed. Granny had a better sex life than I did.