I was free from work to go study during the school term, but during the summer, I was called back in. While I was gone, there was a big reorganization at the workplace, and I now had a new boss. When I started working there, I helped create a lot of the protocols as they were moving one branch from another country, and I was the one who had to make it work. Well, it was my boss back then who was responsible, but as I was the one who did the work, he ran every decision by me.

When I came back, my new boss took me into a room to ask what I was studying, which was math and making algorithms for large quantities of calculations. She then said they would get my system up and running while my coworker trained me. My coworker, who had been trained by me when he started, said not much had changed in our work and just checked if there was anything I had forgotten in the past year, which there wasn’t.

For a few days, they didn’t get the system up and running, and I tried to help my coworkers with whatever I could do without access to the system, which wasn’t much. I told my boss that if there was something I could help with, she should let me know; however, she insisted that I should listen in on calls and learn the job, which was just making more work for the others.

When my system was finally up and I started helping out properly, I did my best to do away with the work I had gotten from the others while starting to answer calls. Just after hanging up a call, I heard my boss say my name and looked in her direction.

Boss: “You didn’t have anything to do, right? You can correct this invoice which is wrong.”

Me: “Well, I actually have a lot to do now, but if it can wait, I can do it later.”

My coworker, who had the invoice job, speaks up.

Coworker: “No, that’s fine. If you’re busy, I’ll just do it myself.”

Boss: “No, she is studying math, so she can correct the invoice.”

Me: “Well, what is the issue?”

Coworker: “Oh, it is just to add and subtract amounts on the faulty items.”

Boss: “You could make a logarithm for it.”

Yes, she said, “logarithm,” but I get that mathematical terms can be confusing.

Me: “It would actually take an unnecessary amount of time to create an algorithm for subtraction and addition. Someone could just do it in Excel or with a calculator.”

Boss: “Well, what else could you be studying in math? I think you should do it. You didn’t have anything to do, you said.”

Me: “All right, I’ll fix the invoice as soon as I’m finished with everything else here.”

Just then, my old boss’s boss came up to me and we greeted each other as we always had a good relationship. Turns out he had been promoted and had moved to Europe’s head office; he was just here visiting to see how things were going.

My boss stared at me while I talked to him and afterward asked:

Boss: “You know him?”

Me: “Well, yes, he was in charge of this office when I worked here.”

Boss: “Oh.”

She left at that. However, after that, she constantly tried to find errors in my work. When she told us to lie to customers, making things sound positive rather than being honest that we couldn’t make guarantees, I refused. Every time she heard me on the phone, she yelled at me afterward, completely ignoring the fact that we’re the ones who have to take the customers’ complaints when we don’t deliver, and guess what? We didn’t manage to deliver on their overly-positive promises.

I resigned. [Boss] had gone on holiday — I hadn’t even been informed that she would be gone — and the boss handling my resignation got panicked. Apparently, they had a note in some Human Resources file somewhere that I was a valuable asset they should try to keep, so he tried to see if there was anything they could change so that I would stay, but I was already thinking of quitting before all this, so my mind was set. I did not want to work for people who thought it was all right to lie to customers.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company] service desk. This is [My Name]. Can I have your first and last name?”

Caller: “It’s [Caller].”

Me: “Okay, I’ve got you pulled up here. What can I help you with today?”

Caller: “I have had three total wireless mouse and keyboard combos shipped out to me to replace my old ones that broke. This is the fourth time I’ve had to call in because they send the mouse and they send the keyboard, but there hasn’t been a USB dongle a single time with them. I don’t know if the person shipping these things out is just checked out for the day all day, every day, or what, but this is getting insane.”

Me: “Okay, can I just get a few minutes to pull up some of your order information here and verify everything?”

Caller: “Yeah, whatever you got to do, but I need to have this issue resolved. I have work I need to do.”

Me: “Okay, just a minute, then.”

I proceed to verify that she has indeed somehow made it through three different IT people and had three combos shipped to her now before coming into my queue.

Me: “Okay, I verified everything here, and I’d just like to verify something with the device you were just sent. Could you open the package and remove both the keyboard and mouse?”

Caller: “Yes, I already did. There is nothing else in here.”

Me: “Okay, and now could I get you to take the mouse and look on the bottom side of it for anything that may look as though the USB dongle was placed into a slot to be held during shipment? It may be pressed into the bottom of the mouse length-wise or width-wise.”

Caller: “Yeah, I don’t see anything like th— Wait, is this it right here? Has it been here the whole time?! And I’ve had two other combos sitting here for a week and it’s been there the whole time? Why didn’t the other two people tell me to check there?!”

Me: “I’m not sure, ma’am, but if it was indeed there and you can confirm it is there on the other two combo sets, as well, I can get you two return labels sent to your printer to be sent back to us.”

Caller: “Please do, and maybe next time they should make the user aware that the USB dongle is inserted into the bottom of the mouse?”

Me: “I’ll mark that down as feedback for your previous incidents. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

Caller: “No, that was everything, thanks.”

Me: “No problem. Have a good day. Bye.”

It was a completely perfect display of all-around failure. The end-user seemingly didn’t have the ability to process that, by the third package, they maybe should investigate the items and see if the dongle somehow is placed within them instead of assuming that the SEALED MERCHANDISE PACKAGE YOU WERE SENT WAS MISSING A USB DONGLE ALL THREE TIMES?

And then there’s the fact that I work with people who don’t know to check those places for USB dongles on wireless devices… and would rather set the lady up for additional shipments.

Many years ago, I was working in the complaints department for a telco and Internet service provider. I did both outbound complaints and transfer escalations.

I had a call come through the transferring agent, who would give a warm handover and explain a brief summary before introducing the customer to me.

Agent: “Hey, [My Name], this customer wants to complain. I literally have no idea what to do or how to explain this, but the guy’s really not happy.”

Me: “It’s fine, just put them through.” *Beep* “Hello, this is [My Name]. How can I help you today?”

Caller: “Well, maybe you could tell me how I’m talking to you if I’m dead?”

Me: “Um… I’m sorry?”

Caller: “Yeah, you idiots have cut off everything and said that I’m dead, so now my phone’s not working. I’m clearly not dead. What are you gonna do about this?”

Me: “I’m sure this is a mistake. Can you give me a minute? I’ll see what’s going on.”

I placed him on hold. Yep, sure enough, his account had been removed, his mobile disconnected, and his file tagged as deceased only two hours earlier. I could see that it was a call made by his daughter.

I took him off hold.

Me: “I’m not sure how to tell you this, sir, but we got a call from [Daughter] two hours ago to advise that you were deceased, and we organised your service disconnection.”

Caller: “SHE F*****’ DID WHAT?! ME?! DEAD?! How do I fix this?”

Me: “Luckily, this was only just done and I can reverse it, but whilst I’m at it, I think it might be wise to remove your daughter from your account so she is unable to make any further changes.”

Caller: “Yeah, no s***.”

I started processing his reconnection.

Caller: “I grounded my daughter last night so she couldn’t go to a party. This must have been her revenge plan.”

I laughed.

Me: “You might want to call around and see what else you can reconnect from beyond the grave!”

I work in customer service and was hired when they were doing some reorganization. Because of some lack of communication, some people they had planned to take on for a little longer weren’t planning to stay, and suddenly, I was alone in handling a whole country only weeks after starting out. My boss was also entirely new to the position; he’d worked with the company before but came to this department after I did.

It became stressful and too much. It had been horribly handled, and my boss knew this, as well. Together, we started setting up new routines while he desperately searched for someone who could help out. In this work, we found trust and an understanding for each other.

Then, the day finally came when he hired a new girl. Hallelujah! It was busier for me at the start, handling the work and teaching her at the same time, but slowly, I could start giving her more work to do, and I was careful not to give her too much at once so she could ease her way into the job and learn it properly.

Eventually, [New Hire] talked to my boss, saying she had nothing to do and that I was so stressed, she felt like she should take on more work. We gave her more work to do. Among these new tasks, she got to handle some special orders for a very important customer where certain items needed to be tagged specially in a separate delivery for legal reasons.

Things went wrong, which was fine — everyone can make mistakes — but then my boss called me in. 

Boss: “She says you won’t let her do any work and that she has nothing to do.”

Me: “If I give her more work, I won’t have much to do myself.”

Boss: “Really? She said you seemed stressed.”

Me: “Well, I’m not, but if she has more time, perhaps she should make sure to get those orders right and double-check them.”

Boss: *Happily* “Right, well, good. It seems we’ve gotten that workload off your shoulders, then.”

However, the issues with the orders continued. After a chain of mistakes, the customer was getting angry and extra action was implemented. I was to double-check the orders before [New Hire] saved them, since two pairs of eyes are more likely to notice mistakes.

I did so. I wrote down the mistakes and told her to fix those before saving them. About a week later, my boss came to me when she wasn’t there.

Boss: “Did you check her orders?”

Me: “Yes, why?”

Boss: “It was wrong again. She says she checked it with you and that everything was fine.”

I panic a bit; did I miss something?

Me: “Let me check.”

Looking through the orders, I saw that all the things I had written down for her hadn’t been changed at all.

Boss: “The customer is really angry. I’m putting you on this task again. Can you try to fix it?”

Of course, I did. However, [New Hire] did not take it very well, wondering why she got the blame when I told her it was good. She also started disappearing from time to time, leaving her phone behind so I couldn’t reach her. This started to impose on my lunch breaks, as we couldn’t leave the phones alone and I was back having the same queues as before she started. She could be gone for over an hour without any explanation other than that she went to talk to a friend. I told her she needed to communicate this and she said she was sorry.

It did not stop, though, despite my efforts, so I went to talk to the boss about it and he said he’d talk to her. After that talk, she came up to me in front of others.

New Hire: “I can’t believe you went to talk to the boss about me! I thought we were friends!”

Me: “Well, maybe you shouldn’t disappear from the job.”

New Hire: “You could have talked to me about it!”

Then, she stormed off.

The next time I had a meeting with the boss, I couldn’t leave because [New Hire] wasn’t by the phones, even though I had reminded her several times. Half an hour later, when our meeting was supposed to be finished, my boss came by.

Boss: “[My Name], we have a meeting now.”

Me: “I know, but [New Hire] hasn’t come back.”

My boss looked angry. I had never seen him angry before; he was always happy with a big smile on his face.

Boss: *In a scarily dark voice* “Shut it down. It is on her. We have a meeting.”

When I came back, [New Hire] yelled at me for leaving the post and I told her it was the boss’s orders. The panic on her face as she realised the boss had caught her disappearing made me smile on the inside.

Soon after that, my boss said he had found someone else to hire and that he would let her know [New Hire] would not be staying with the company. The next day, she let us all know she had decided to resign. Most people were sad to see her go, which makes me wonder what I missed.

I work as a customer service representative. A customer once told me:

Customer: “You’re so worthless that the only value you will ever bring to this world is as a life insurance payment.”

It’s the meanest thing a customer has ever said to me. I’ll never forget that, and I’ll always make sure to treat any customer service representative I speak to over the phone with the utmost courtesy, even if they can’t help me.