I received an email from my supervisor with an attachment saying:

Attachment: “consumer_complaint_generalattorney.pdf”

I went through the e-mail, and here’s how it goes:

The customer is a 65+ year old lady, has filed a complaint against the company, citing that she can’t seem to find adequate technical support for her new unit setup. She tried calling the support number, but every time she tried, she got connected to a person speaking a foreign language.

I work in a multinational corporation based in the US. I have been in the organisation for many years, gone through a few promotions, and currently I handle escalations, technical support, and official complaints for people with special needs and physical disabilities, in compliance with the ADA Act by the US Federal Government. So, one can say my current job role is a mandatory requirement for most service/product-based companies.

So today, I went through the e-mail thread and the legal files for more details before I call back the customer.

The customer is from one of the Southeastern States and filed a complaint against the company, which reached our legal team, and from which it reached me.

For a particular unit that she purchased, we can have a person from her part of the state, who will have a similar accent to her and who she can understand to assist her, but they aren’t technically trained to assist in troubleshooting/setup.

The technical team who troubleshoots for that particular unit (my L1 team) is sitting in an another country, my country, where the language of communication is mostly English and are fluent in it, but most wouldn’t even try to speak in an American accent, because in our country, they have this notion that the Yankee accent is kinda funny; we mostly tend to stick to a neutral tongue.

Anyhow, I took a few deep breaths and dialed the number, ready to give my opening script. I mumbled “Esse quam videri” and hoped for the best.

I heard three rings. Someone picked up the phone.

Me: “Hi, my name is [My Name] from [Company]. I am the one handling the legal complaint from the organisation, and I am one of the supervisors, specialized in attending to our customers with physical disabi—”

Before I could finish, I heard a sound.

Customer: “I can’t understand you.”

Then a click.

Silence.

I started thinking, was I speaking too fast? No, I wasn’t. 

Was my accent too foreign for her? Nah, can’t be. I have had really happy customers from parts of the US, even from Boston, who had a thicker accent, who could understand me. I even had a corn farmer from Alabama as a customer once who had one of the thickest southern accents, who told me I could be an American.

What exactly went wrong? I called her again.

I gave her the standard opening script, and I said really slowly, making sure she could comprehend each and every word:

Me: “I will be assisting you with the issue, and anytime you feel like you don’t understand me, you can stop me right there and ask me to repeat, I’ll be more than happy to—”

Customer: *Cutting me off.* “—Yeah, you can help me out, but are you American?”

Me: “No, I am not.”

Customer: “Well, then I am afraid I don’t understand you. Bye.”

Click. She hung up on me again.

I spent some time hanging around the water filter, made myself an espresso, and started typing the reply to the e-mail.

Me: “Hi, supervisor, [Customer] is either a racist or has a fetish towards American Accents. [Customer] has explicitly asked for a person of American descent. Please have someone call her ASAP.”

I deleted the first line of the email and sent it. All the best to me tomorrow.

I am an eighteen-year-old male, born completely deaf and mute. Also, I am partially blind in my left eye. I live with my sister (twenty-eight) who has been taking care of me since our parents died. Recently, she got married and went on her honeymoon, so I am on my own for a few weeks.

This happened yesterday. Usually, whenever I go out, I am accompanied by my sister due to my disability. But now, since she is on her honeymoon, I had to go out alone. There was a new supermarket opened in our area, and I needed some items, so I decided to go there and grab them.

My bad for wearing a red shirt similar to those worn by the employees working there. But if you looked closely, you could see that it was not the uniform. I was in the electronics section looking for some batteries, when I saw an old man struggling to get some DVDs from the top shelf. Since I am tall, I helped him. He thanked me (I can do lip reading) and went on his way.

Then, I resumed looking for the batteries. That’s when I felt someone grab my left wrist. I turned around, and a women in her late forties slapped me. She was saying something, but I couldn’t follow her lips as she spoke too fast. However, I was able to catch some words like “you”, “ignore”, “job”, etc.

I signed to her that I am deaf. Apparently, this was a wrong move because she became more irate toward the signing. Again, she was yelling something, but I couldn’t catch anything. So, I took my notebook and started writing that I am deaf and mute. Before I could finish, she grabbed my notebook and pen and threw them away. Then, she slapped me again and pushed me to the ground.

Luckily, by that time, a store employee had come to see what the commotion was about. He saw me on the ground and helped me up, and then he asked me what had happened. Before I could sign to him, the woman started to yell at the employee. I don’t know what she said as she was not facing me. After she finished, I signed to the employee that I cannot hear or speak. Fortunately, he understood and explained this to the lady.

But she was still not convinced. She tried to assault me again, but I moved away. Then I wrote a note asking the employee to call the cops on her. The employee nodded and called the cops. The woman tried to run away, but the security caught her.

The police arrived in about ten minutes. They first talked to the employee, who explained the situation and told them about how the woman had assaulted me because she had mistaken me for a store employee. One police officer came and spoke to me. I understood that he wanted my version of events, so I wrote everything down and showed it to the officer.

Then, they went to check the CCTV footage. Then came back and asked me if I wanted to press charges. I gladly said yes. The woman was then placed in handcuffs and given a free ride at the back of a police cruiser.

The manager then explained to me that the woman thought I worked there, and she became angry that I ignored her. She had been standing on my left side, so obviously, I couldn’t see her. The store manager then offered me a 50% discount on the products.

I texted my sister about the events that happened and she was livid. Oh, did I mention that my sister is a lawyer? She told me that she herself will be handling the case and will see to it that the woman gets the maximum time. (Lawyers in India can represent their family in court as long as they are not directly involved in it and the judge is not a relative to the lawyer.)

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I decided I wanted a PlayStation 3. My dad refused to buy me one, but my uncle made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he would buy me a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment. For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic!

[Uncle] sold a kind of specialty snack known as a mini-samosa in his shop. They are like samosas but smaller, about 3.5 to 4 cm in size (about 1/2286 of a football field for my American friends). They were sold by weight in sealed packs of 250 gms and 500 gms as these were the most common amounts people bought.

Making those packages turned out to be my job. At some point after [Uncle] started his business, he realized that 250 gms was roughly the weight of twenty-eight mini-samosas and thus fifty-six were 500 gms. So, instead of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier and saved time. We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller, or unusual amounts.

This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs (“Jaago Grahak, Jaago,” for my fellow Indians) — basically, telling customers to beware of fraudulent businesspeople.

One particularly hot afternoon, it was just [Uncle] and me at the shop. In India, frequent powercuts were very common during summers and thus there were no fans or AC running. Both tempers and temperatures were running high at the shop that day.

It was then that the villain of our story made his entry. He was a local resident and a regular. He seemed angry from the onset when he barged into the shop. He took a look at the fans and saw that they weren’t running, and then he angrily picked up a 500-gm pack of samosas.

Customer: “How many samosas are in this thing?”

Me: “That’s 500 gms.”

Customer: “I asked how many, not how much! Again, how many in this?”

I replied immediately since, you know, I had packed them.

Me: “Fifty-six.”

Customer: “How can you be so sure? You didn’t even count! You’re trying to cheat me! I demand that you pack me 500 gms of those individual ones, and don’t you dare cheat me again!”

I looked over at my uncle who was wet with sweat and fanning himself with yesterday’s newspaper. He slowly nodded, and I beamed a huge smile.

Me: “Sure, sir! Whatever you want!”

I took a bag, picked up some samosas, and started putting them on the balance. I kept counting samosas as I put them in until they were a little over 500 gms. Then, I removed the last samosa, and the weight fell below 500. Now, keeping eye contact with the customer, I crushed the samosa and started putting its powdery remains in the bag until it was exactly 500 gms.

But wait, there’s more! The guy apparently didn’t seem to mind powdered samosa but instead asked:

Customer: *Smugly* “So, how many samosas now?”

Me: *Triumphantly* “Forty-eight!”

You see, sometime in the past, my uncle’s old chef had retired, and the new chef made samosas with a little bit more filling in them. They looked the same size on the outside and only weighed a couple of grams more each, and since he made them in bulk and also sold to other shops in the area, the price wasn’t too much of an issue, so [Uncle] let it slide. But those couple of grams added up on mass orders, and that is what this customer found out the hard way.

He looked sheepishly at the pre-packed samosas and then at his own package and asked if he could buy the former instead.

My uncle finally spoke.

Uncle: “No, my nephew made a package specially for you, at your own request, so that is what you have to buy.”

The man silently took his pack, paid, and left. He was a lot more respectful during his subsequent visits.

I was reminded of this story yesterday when my PS3 finally died.

About eleven years ago, I visited India. I went to a Sikh temple and sat down to enjoy langer (free food served by Sikhs to anyone who walks in). I was served food by a volunteer, and we started chatting after lunch and became buddies.

Fast forward: I was visiting another Sikh temple in the Himalayas, and in the kitchen, there was only one volunteer when a large bus filled with people pulled in. I went up to the guy and asked if he needed help, and he gladly accepted it.

I started serving food to people sitting in the lines, and guess who I saw sitting down? My buddy from the first Sikh temple. It was great seeing him, and we said our hellos!

Me: “I actually got to pay it forward — and to the original person!”

Buddy: “Isn’t that just paying back?

Me: “…way to ruin a beautiful moment!”

We laughed at the amazing coincidence.

This is a story about a very old, very kind university librarian I got to know in India, back in the 1990s.

Student: “I need the book Oranges And Peaches.”

Librarian: “This seems unfamiliar to me. Do you know the author?”

Student: “I forgot.”

Librarian: “What course by which professor do you need it for?”

Student: “[Course] by [Professor].”

Librarian: “Ah, so, hmm… Are you possibly looking for On The Origin Of Species?”