(I’m an engineer for one of the biggest ISPs in the UK. I have a home visit next in my daily planner for a customer having trouble with their TV service. The notes claim it has been escalated as advanced, so I have a two-hour slot allocated for the visit. I turn up at the customer’s door and she just stands there looking at me for a while.)

Me: “Excuse me, just to confirm you are Mrs. [Customer]? I’m the telecom engineer you have booked to come and investigate a fault you reported with your television service.”

Customer: “Oh, yes. Um, so, is your partner still at the van or something?”

Me: “No, just me.”

Customer: “I thought you said you were a technical engineer, a nerd! Where are your glasses, crazy hair, spotty face, and fat?!”

(I am about to laugh, thinking she is joking, but she just stands there, deadly serious, waiting for an answer.)

Me: “I can assure you, I’m an engineer. Here’s my ID card. It should match the name on the text message you were sent, and as you can see, I have been fixing faults like yours since 2011. Would you like to show me where your set top box and router is located?”

Customer: *still not convinced* “I suppose. But I still can’t believe they sent out someone just like me. I know my stuff, but simply can’t get it to work at all. That’s why I called for help. For a geek!”

(She continues to suggest that she probably knows more than I do, and that I am just a kid who knows nothing. I start by checking that everything is wired up correctly ,while the customer is literally breathing down my neck, looking closely at what I am doing. I ask her a few more questions, and her answers seem normal — with exception to all the insults she also slides in.)

Me: “Well, so far, so good. It looks like you have everything wired correctly, and your broadband is functioning properly. Let’s see if I can get any life out of your set top box.”

Customer: “Look, you’re just wasting my ti– How the hell did you do that?”

Me: “There’s a red power switch on the back of the box. You hadn’t pressed it.”

Customer: *physically dragging me backwards by my shoulder to guide me out of her house* “Here’s £10. Change your report so I don’t sound stupid in your files!”

Me: “I’m afraid there is a charge of £65 if there is no fault found, or the problem relates to user error. There’s no need to pay me, but it will be added to your next bill. Would you like me to come back inside and make sure it’s set up properly and works fine?”

Customer: “F*** it. F*** you! I’m complaining right now! How dare you insult my intelligence!” *slams door*

(In our shipping stations, we have four workstations logged in the whole day to accomplish various tasks. Up until this point, they all used a generic “Shipping” login; however, we’ve just been told that new compliance rules have been set up and we can no longer log in multiple times with a single account. Compliance with WHAT, exactly, is never listed. I draw the short straw to call up IT to get some more answers, and get bumped around until I talk to the System Admin.)

Me: “I understand we’re not going to be allowed to log in to all four systems at once starting Monday.”

System Admin: “Correct.”

Me: “I’m guessing that we’ll get separate logins, then?”

System Admin: “Nope.”

Me: “What do you mean, ‘nope,?”

System Admin: “We don’t have time to set all that up.”

Me: “Are you kidding me? I know for a fact it takes about 15 seconds to set up an account; you just hit, ‘duplicate,’ and enter a new name. It doesn’t even need to be complicated; we’ve got, ‘Tickets,’ ‘Scan Check,’ ‘Labels,’ and, ‘Shipping.’ Heck, we already have, ‘Shipping,’ so that’s only three.”

System Admin: “No, sorry. We just can’t do it.”

Me: “So, let me get this straight. Because you don’t want to spend literally a minute setting up these accounts, we now have to individually log into a computer to process and print the tickets, log out of that and into a second one to scan the items to make sure they’re correct, log out of that and into a third one if we need any manual or extra labels printed, then log out of that one and into a fourth one, just to finalize the orders? Every hour? And then repeat the process if there’s ever a mistake?”

System Admin: *smugly* “Well, I guess you’ll just have to not make many mistakes, will you? Now, I’ve got some actual work to get to, if you don’t have anything else. The only way I could do this would be to get a direct order from [Head of IT].”

(With that, he hung up on me. I turned to the shipping manager, who was working just over my shoulder, and relayed that last bit of info. Since he just happened to have an Operations meeting that week with the heads of every “backroom” department — including IT as well as the VP of Operations — you’re dang right we had our four unique workstation logins before Monday!)

(My father repairs computers as a secondary job. A customer is asking him for help with his new computer.)

Customer: “I want some programs on my computer.”

Father: “Bring the PC and—”

Customer: “What?”

Father: “You have a screen, a box, a mouse, and a keyboard. Bring the box.”

Customer: “Okay.”

(He brought the box in which he received the PC. He even had some chains to keep the box closed, so that the programs wouldn’t fall out!)

(My job is sending lab tests to different labs, which is more typing out the tests than actually moving the samples around. I don’t usually turn on my computer until I get my first stack of tests, which can take a couple of hours depending on the day’s traffic, so I don’t really notice if my computer is working until I do. After getting my first stack of files for the day, I notice my computer isn’t working, and after trying to fix it, the whole electric circuit jumps. This means that other than the computer not working, we also have no fax or copy machine. I can’t work, which might cost me, since my boss isn’t exactly my biggest fan. A coworker of mine calls an electrician. The electrician checks everything, tries to turn the computer back on, and nothing happens, so they say it’s the computer and go. My first thought is that I’m going to need a new computer, but my coworker says she’ll call IT. They say it’ll take a while and end up sending someone about an hour later.)

IT: “What’s the problem?”

Me: “The whole circuit doesn’t work, and when I try to turn on my computer, there’s a red light and it beeps.”

IT: *taking his time going through everything* “What are you saying? What is that supposed to mean? Are you sure it’s not the circuit that’s problematic?”

Coworker: “We just had an electrician here, and everything is fine.”

Me: “It’s the computer. And the screen, and the copy machine.” *muttering to myself* “And now also my phone. Great.”

IT: *after twenty minutes of just poking around* “I’ll take your computer for a second and check. It might be the circuit.”

(The guy leaves for another ten minutes, and when he comes back, he lays this gem on me:)

IT: “I just tested your computer in another room and it works just fine, so it’s the circuit.”

(He then proceeds to plug the computer back in, which — yet again — jumps the whole circuit, and possibly the printer, too, which is rather far from my desk.)

Me: *to my coworkers* “Well, I guess I’m not working today! My computer is dead!”

(The IT guy then decided that I might need a new computer. And that’s a conclusion that took me two minutes to reach, originally.)

(I’m doing the night shift for an online trading site. The shift is always full of oddballs. One chat is perfectly normal, right until the end.)

Customer: “Do you offer a demo account?”

Me: “Yes, we do. You will need to speak to an account manager about it once you have created a live account.”

Customer: “I see. Do you ever sometimes wonder what water thinks about?”

Me: “No, I don’t. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Customer: “Yes, I’d like to have a baby put a baby in me.”