I work for a well-known national bank in the fraud protection department. One day, I receive a call from a very angry customer. After my opening script and verification process:

Me: “…so, what seems to be the problem today, ma’am?”

Customer: “YOU HAVE BLOCKED MY CARDS! YOU HAVE BLOCKED THEM BECAUSE YOU THINK I’M TOO F****** POOR TO GO ON A VACATION! F*** YOU! F*** YOU! OPEN THEM RIGHT NOW!”

I begin my “Customer Complaint” logging process and go through the charges on her card to see what might have triggered the block. She is screaming the entire time.

Me: “Okay, ma’am, I think I see the issue here. You’re from New York, correct? And now you’re currently in Vegas. There’s not a notice of travel placed for this specific card, so it was blocked as standard procedure. If you’ll verify a couple of charges with me, we can get this opened again.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! I shouldn’t have to ask you for permission to go on a vacation! Can I buy some gum with my card?! Is that okay with you?! What about when my rent comes up? Am I allowed to pay my rent so I won’t be homeless?!”

I kind of ignore this rant and ask her about a couple of charges to the card, which she verifies as having been her in the same manner that she’s been screaming at me.

Me: “Okay, ma’am, please try your card one more time for me and let’s make sure it’s opened.”

She manages to withdraw $500 at a third-party ATM.

Me: “Excellent! Now, if you’d like to place a notice of travel, this will prevent the system from flagging any future standard transactions as potential fraud. It will expire on the date you select, so there will be no interruption of service when you return home.”

Customer: “F*** you! You don’t need to know s*** about what I’m doing! This is an invasion of my privacy, and I’m going to change banks as soon as I’m home! You just lost a customer!”

She hangs up on me. I message my supervisor.

Me: “The customer on this account is traveling from New York state to Vegas and is refusing to place a travel flag on the account. What do I do?”

Supervisor: “Notate that customer refuses to place a flag in the system or allow one to be placed and hope you’re not the next person on the phone with her.”

It’s been a few years since this happened in 2016, so some of the specific details are fuzzy. I was working as a floor supervisor for a satellite TV company’s technical support center. The call group I was heading up was a corporate-level team designed to handle customer situations that were recurring frequently or just not getting resolved.

The customer called in and spoke to my agent, demanding credit on his account because he couldn’t watch a baseball game that had happened two days before. On top of that, he was wanting the company to reimburse him for his ~$100 bar tab because he “had to go there to watch the game” because he got an error message. Company policy was that if there was an actual issue and we couldn’t fix it, we’d give credit for the time you were without service.

The error he was getting was a black-out message. He lived in the Chicagoland area, and he was wanting to watch a Cubs playoff game. Since he was in the local area and it was a home game, they had restricted the broadcast in his area to encourage people to buy a ticket and see the game in person. While it’s not what most people want to hear, normally, they understand. Not this guy. He asked for a supervisor and I took the call.

He immediately tore into me, cursing the company, me personally, and anyone else he could think of that might have been involved. I let him get it out of his system and asked for some more information. After he explained the situation, I confirmed that his service was working properly and explained the issue. I also asked him to call us in the future when the issue was happening so that we could fix it.

He refused to accept anything beyond a technician coming out and a full year of service, for free. Like… everything. NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB Extra Innings, HBO, all the international channels (from China, the Philippines, Guatemala, etc,), you name it, he wanted it — for free. I did the math out then, and I think it was around $3,500 in total services he was demanding. As a tenured employee, even I didn’t get all that, and I told him as much.

For some reason, that’s when he changed tactics and started crying, recounting the horrible things he saw and did while a member of the armed services (Marine Corps, I think it was). I have no idea the experiences he’d had and can’t imagine how traumatizing the things he was telling me must have been, but they didn’t change that there wasn’t actually a problem, and if there had been, we weren’t given a chance to fix it.

When crying didn’t work, he threatened to kill me and bomb the call centre. That’s when I took all his information (we had his name, address, phone number, SSN — the whole nine yards) and provided them to his local law enforcement agency. I escalated the call to my corporate security team so that they could provide the call’s recording as evidence for when he went to trial.

It wasn’t cost-effective to have me flown from Denver to Chicago for the proceedings, but I was kept in the loop when he was arrested and charged. I’m pretty sure he took a plea deal.

I work at a call center where we are required to verify certain pieces of security information with the customer. If the customer does everything online, and this security information is wrong, we have to contact the customer and verify the correct information. One of these pieces of information is the billing address as it reads on the customer’s account.

Near the beginning of the global health crisis, I had to call one of these customers who had provided incorrect information. This tends to happen a lot because people will put an address on file and then forget to update it as their life changes. It’s completely understandable; however, we still have to follow the security protocol.

The customer was unable to verify the address multiple times, even when I suggested he log into his account to find the address and read it off to me. It’s frustrating, but I can’t do anything about it besides make suggestions about where he can look.

We do have a workaround, though; if you’re unable to verify this information, we can run you through a different program where you have to answer questions based on what the government knows about you — things like, “What color was this make and model of car you had?” or, “Which of the following streets did you live on?” You are asked three questions, but you only have to get two of them correct. I can do this twice before the system locks you out.

The customer failed both times.

At this point, after we’ve exhausted the other options, we no longer can assist you over the phone; you have to go to your account and download a specific piece of paperwork that you can only get if you have account access and then upload it to us so we have proof you’re legitimate and not a scammer.

When I informed the customer that I would need this document, after he was unable to provide the billing address multiple times, and after he was unable to answer any of the security questions, he decided this was a perfectly valid response:

Customer: “I hope you get [contagious illness] and die!”

When I later reviewed the call with my supervisor, we found that the customer had managed to upload the document in question, so they weren’t even a scammer, just an a**hole.

I work in a retail call center.

Caller: “I just got a box from you guys, but not everything is in there. Can you confirm if you shipped everything?”

Me: “Absolutely, I’ll take a look. What’s the order number?”

Caller: “Um…”

I hear them fumbling around. I try to be helpful.

Me: “If you have the packing slip from the box, it should have all the information I’d need.”

Caller: “Oh, well, yeah, I haven’t opened the box yet.”

But somehow you know something is missing?

Caller: “Give me a second.”

I hear a package being opened.

Caller: “Ohhhhhh, yeah, sorry. This isn’t even from you guys.”

I was a team leader for a call center. We had an employee transfer from another project after the respective management there grew irritated with the constant string of complaints from the project stakeholders concerning the quality of his work. They felt that our project was less complex; it was simply handling customer inquiries and complaints. Most of the information needed was right at our fingertips, and the training period was only a week long.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly for [Employee] for the first two weeks until the project manager for our team summoned me to his office with a “You can’t be serious” look on his face. He presented me a printed copy of an email that [Employee] had sent to a “particular” staff member.

Email: “Hello, (quote/unquote) [Name that is also a title of a royal monarch]. Aside from your lame nickname, I was called about ticket [number], and I see you put in the notes that the issue is being examined by the IT department and you wrote the customer telling her so. Can you show me the supposed actions of this so-called IT department, where it’s documented, and when it’s supposed to be resolved? Or are you just making up crap that sounds good to the customer so she’ll go away and you can close the ticket? If you’re not sure how to handle a problem that’s complicated, you need to ask someone to help you. Lying to the customers and shuffling the work to someone else creates serious problems for everyone at the company and makes everything worse. I had to do some damage control and apologize to the customer for your dishonesty and unwillingness to do your job. The final thing, when you correspond with a customer, try using your REAL name rather than some stupid nickname. [Royal Monarch Title]? No offense, but grow up!”

I let out a loud sigh and repeatedly banged the back of my head against the wall behind me. The project manager and I both sat there shaking our heads in silence before I picked up the phone.

Me: “[Employee], please log out of your terminal and come to [Project Manager]’s office… Yes, that’s what I said. LOG OUT.”

When he appeared in the office, I had him read over the email and gave him a moment to explain himself. He launched into a spiel about ethics, morals, company image, and blah, blah, blah before I held up my hand and then calmly explained.

Me: “Number one: [Royal Monarch Title] really is our coworker’s real name. Number two: she is the director of operations for our client; she simply doesn’t include her title and position in her email signature to avoid having customers running directly to her over petty issues that are handled by management. Number three: for security reasons, we don’t have access to notes made by our client’s IT department, which is why she makes a note in the ticket that they are addressing the issue so that we all know. Number four: she wants you off the project. Immediately.”

Employee: “Oh… okay. Sorry about that. So, what project am I going to now?”

Project Manager: “That’s the other thing we need to discuss. The Human Resources manager would like to have a word with you.”

The color completely drained from this guy’s face.

And right on cue, the phone rang.

Project Manager: “Hello… Yes, we’re just wrapping up right now. I’ll send him up right now.” *Hangs up* “Good luck!”

Yep, you guessed it — permanent unpaid vacation!