Customer: “What’s your name, sweetie?”

Employee: “Jade.”

Customer: “Jane?”

Employee: “Oh, no, like the rock.”

Customer: “Oh. Dwayne! Nice to meet you, Dwayne!” 

That young woman has been “Dwayne” to that old lady for three years now.

I work in the computer department at an electronics store.

Customer: “I need help with my Mac!”

Me: “What seems to be the problem?”

Customer: “I can’t open up my mail! It’s my husband’s fault.”

Me: “Why do you say that?”

Customer: “The batteries were running low in the mouse, and he put new batteries in. Since then, my email has stopped working.”

Me: “I really don’t think that the two are related.”

Customer: “Then you’re incompetent! They shouldn’t let you work with computers! It happened around the same few days as when my husband changed the batteries, so it has to be that!”

I was able to figure out her technical issue, but her marriage issue was beyond my scope. She HAD to be angry at her husband no matter how I explained it. Poor guy!

A while back, there was a type of film that was supposed to be user-friendly. Basically, it had a little counter on it. If the counter said one, the film was brand new. If it was two, the film was partially shot but not finished. Three meant that the roll was completed and ready to be developed. And four meant that the film had already been processed.

Of course, most people who used it didn’t get what the numbers meant, so it was common enough for me to explain it to them.

A customer came to my counter with about four rolls of this film, all set on four, showing that they had already been developed.

Customer: “I want these developed.”

Me: “Ma’am, see how these are set to four? That means they’ve already been developed. I can make reprints of the pictures, but that’s different pricing.”

Customer: “What? These rolls haven’t ever been processed.”

After trying to explain it to her a couple of times, she kept insisting that I was wrong but agreed to the reprint price anyway.

I ran her film, and an hour later, she was back in line waiting to pick up her pictures. After she paid:

Customer: *Screaming* “I already have these pictures! What did you do with my other film?!”

Me: “That was the film you brought in. I did try to explain that your pictures had already been processed.”

Customer: *Screaming* “You’re a thief! You stole my new pictures and replaced them with the old ones!”

Me: “Ma’am, how could I reprint pictures from film you say you didn’t bring in?”

I couldn’t even begin to rationalize with her, so I just brought my manager over. Sadly, she got her refund.

I work for a customer assistance call center. Customers call in with questions, and we call back with answers.

I had one client who, somehow, kept getting put on my schedule to call back, and her question had nothing to do with our company. I told her three times that we only help with matters related to our products. Finally, I asked her to stop calling and wasting our time.

She showed up on my schedule again, and I simply skipped her and called the next. This happened a few times. I did eventually learn why she gravitated to me: a few coworkers of mine had conspired to get her switched to my schedule as a “prank”.

A manager came to me with concerns and said that I should be calling the client back to answer, even though it was a waste of time. So, I called the number listed… and a fax machine screamed very loudly into my ear at the other end. It hurt.

I grabbed the manager and demonstrated that the client’s listed number was now linked to a fax machine. I also requested a medical day off due to ear pain from this event.

The manager was quite upset to learn about this prank. When I got back to the office, he told me that he had tracked down the client’s original number and called her up to let her know, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever played a fax machine prank like that, he would press charges.

(He had the police swing around to her house to talk to her, as well, but the police said a single time wasn’t enough to prove intent to harm.)

He also instructed the office to simply cancel any call-back appointments in the client’s name if she called in again.

She’s the first — and so far only — person that we’ve banned from service.

My coworkers who were attempting to prank me by repeatedly putting her into my queue were written up by Human Resources. I was also interviewed by HR as they were worried that the workplace was toxic for me due to this “prank”.

My most entitled jerk was my (former) Call Center Director. Less than a week after she came into our call center for [TV Channel Distributor], she decided that her position made her one step below God, and you had better NOT be an atheist — i.e., if you think she’s wrong, expect a smiting.

She posted computer-typed signs all over the center that read:

Sign: “No drinks permitted on the floor unless you have a doctor’s note for water. If you have a doctor’s note, water is the only thing permitted. No personal items are allowed at your stations. The first time will be a warning; the second will be a write-up. Thank you, [Director].”

The first pushback came from the staff with diabetes. They needed juice or a sweet drink in case their sugar got low. Previously, the policy was that if you had a sealable container or a juice box, that was fine. Microphones could be muted at strategic times, and employees could take necessary drinks as long as there were no loud gulping noises in a customer’s ear. Perfectly reasonable.

Nope. Not anymore! We were subject to a rant that was… impressive in its horribleness.

Director: “The diabetics are welcome to ask permission to leave their station to get their juice — if their current call has been completed. What’s that? Some calls can take over an hour? Well, I guess you’re just going to have to power through, then, aren’t you? I didn’t ask for your opinions, and I don’t care about your excuses. You have ten seconds to get over it. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. There. You are over it. No more complaining. Don’t you ever bring it up again in my presence! It has been decided, and it is now set in stone!”

I’m sure you can imagine how well that went over; the company’s Human Resources got a formal complaint from every single staff member with diabetes before the day was even out. The signs disappeared, and [Director] seethed for weeks after.

Now, our call center was in central Oklahoma; tornadoes were our natural disaster of choice. Because the center was for a TV channel distributor, we had screens on the walls with various channels quietly or mutely playing in the background. Cell phones were to be on vibrate but could be kept at hand if emergency alerts had to come in; our emergency alert system would send alerts to every single cell phone in the state if need be. 

So, of course, [Director]’s second pushback was over personal items being banned. Again, we received a berating rant that culminated in her closing the curtains and turning the TVs off. We had to lock our cell phones in lockers.

Director: “Staff should be working, not staring out the windows, watching the screens, or playing with their phones!”

Go figure: the only way the employees knew there was a tornado headed toward them was from a customer.

Customer: “I hope you aren’t in [City]. There is a tornado on the ground and heading straight for it!”

Coworker: “Oh, God… I am! I’m sorry, but I gotta hang up!”

Everyone basically ignored [Director]’s yelling at us to get back to work.

Director: “The tornado isn’t going to be that bad! The likelihood of it hitting us is minimal! How dare you?!”

Rant, rant, rant.

The alarm was set off to alert everyone in the building, which thankfully drowned her out for the most part.

Everyone followed the drill procedure and sheltered. Well, it turned out that we were indeed at ground zero.

[Director] shut up when the tornado ripped part of the roof off of the building and we could hear the roaring of the wind through the door of our shelter. When the shell-shocked staff came out, I saw water pouring in from the torn roof. A piece of wood shaped like a spear had actually punched through an outer wall, through one of the TVs, and halfway through the wall behind it. I’m sure you can imagine what could have happened to a person if we had obeyed [Director] and stayed where we were.

Because of a busted gas line, we had to be evacuated out the back of the building without our phones and could not retrieve them for over a day. We spent hours shuttling workers home, all of whom had no way to call their loved ones. My wife was working at one place, my eldest daughter at another, and we still had three younger kids at home. None of my family had any way of knowing how or where I was for about three hours. I had no way of knowing if they were safe or not, either. Thankfully, the tornado missed their workplaces but by less than half a mile. Our house was safe, as were our little ones.

Rumor has it that the blow-up at [Director] was epic. I would have paid big money to be a fly on the wall for the teardown, but sadly, I can’t report details of what happened. It’s no secret that she was fired, as she disappeared rather abruptly and silently, and someone else got things back up and running. Her “rules” were erased from existence by a very public announcement to all returning staff that the previous rules about drinks and personal items like phones were back in effect.

I have vowed that my phone will be with me whether a company likes it or not, and I will die on this hill.