Caller: “Hello, I want to know if it will be snowing on [weekend].”

Me: “Sir, that weekend is six weeks away.”

Caller: “Yes, I know how calendars work. I want to know if it will be snowing on that [weekend].”

Me: “We can’t know what the weather will have in store that far in advance. I’d recommend you look up the weather for the area closer to the time of your trip.”

Caller: “Of course I know I can do that! But you live up there! You must know what the weather is like!”

Me: “Where do you live, sir?”

Caller: “Florida.”

Me: “Will there be a hurricane in six weeks?”

Caller: “How the h*** should I know?”

Me: “Well, you live down there. You must know what the weather is like!”

Caller: “That’s different! Hurricanes are unpredictable!”

Me: “And so is snow. Not even the weatherman and his Doppler can predict weather patterns further than a week out, sir.”

Caller: “But… you live out there!”

Me: “And I still have no idea.”

Caller: “But if I check the weather a week ahead, I’ll be doing just what everyone else is doing!”

Me: “There’s a reason for that.”

Caller: “Will your manager know if it’s snowing on [weekend]?”

Me: “No, sir. No one will.”

Caller: “This is so stupid! You charge an arm and a leg for people to go skiing, and you can’t predict the weather!” *Click.*

At the time of this story, we’re having an unusually heavy snowfall in the Netherlands. Other countries will probably laugh at the amount of snow, but here ‘the country is on its bum’, as we say.

Public transportation is down, trash no longer gets collected (narrow streets + big truck = disaster), people can’t go to work because the roads are white and the snow ploughs can’t keep up. The trash companies actually let their truck drivers drive snow ploughs or trucks that spread salt because they are used to heavy trucks.

My company rents out Social Housing. Because of the amount of snow, we are forced to work from home. Many can, and some technicians are on ’emergency repairs’ duty. If there’s an emergency, our technicians will brave the white outside, but it may take a bit longer than usual. And because we all care about our coworkers outside, we customer service people make sure it is indeed an emergency.

A Lot Of Callers: “I have an appointment for today; how late will the technician be here?”

Most Of Our Responses: “Unfortunately, they won’t make it. I see we tried to call you for rescheduling, but no one answered the phone.”

Insert reason why they didn’t pick up and understanding customer… great! Rescheduled!

The Occasional Client: “What?! But I waited for weeks for this appointment! This is unacceptable!”

In reality, it was days.

Me: “I understand your response, but there is a national weather alert.”

The Occasional Client: “I know, I can’t go anywhere!”

Me: “And our technicians are in the same boat.”

The Occasional Client: “Well… this is an emergency! Surely you have an emergency protocol!”

Me: “We do, but unfortunately, hanging up a shelf is not an emergency.”

The Occasional Client: “It is an emergency!”

Me: “So you say you need to leave the house and can no longer stay in your house because of this?”

The Occasional Client: “Leave the house?! Have you seen the weather?!”

Me: “So you can stay in the house?”

The Occasional Client: “I can’t go anywhere!”

Me: “So that means it’s not an emergency, right?”

This usually shuts them up. However, one call went differently:

Client: “My faucet is leaking.”

Me: “I am so sorry to hear that. I have a plumber available in two days, assuming the weather will be better.”

Client: “Yes… but my faucet is leaking.”

Older client, repeating himself… maybe hard of hearing? I repeat the offer. Same response. I repeat the offer in different words. Same response.

Me: “All right… can you put a bucket underneath it?”

Client: “Will that stop the leak?

Okay, red flags. I put the client on hold and call the planner.

Me: “Hey, I have [Address], and the man has a leaky faucet… but my belly—” *onderbuikgevoel* “—is nagging. Something is off. No matter what I try, he doesn’t answer my questions, only repeats… He is in his eighties, so…”

Planner: “You wouldn’t call if you weren’t worried. You’re in luck, I have a guy working two streets away. I’ll ask him to check it out. Might take a while, though.”

Me: “Thanks.”

I return to the client and thank him for waiting. No response. I shout (working from home all alone does have advantages), no response. I hear no movement… nothing. I return to the planner, letting him know there’s no sound whatsoever anymore.

The planner says he’ll take over from me, considering the wait line. Through chat, he lets me know that calling the client was of no use; no one picked up.

You probably all share my worry, so I won’t stall any longer: all was fine.

The technician went over, the older gentleman opened the door, and all was well. The older gentleman managed to grab a pan and put it under the leaky faucet… and promptly forgot about the phone. He was indeed hard of hearing, so when he was in another room, he did not hear the calls.

He did not seem confused or anything else worrisome, but our ‘outside housing manager’ (who walks around the area to check on houses, gardens, illegal dumping, and people we worry about) decided to visit the client when the snow was mostly gone. Again, nothing worrisome, but my coworker will check on him regularly just in case.

To the technician who braved the white world because of a leaky faucet… You are a hero!

A customer buys a laptop and, instead of heading straight out, walks over to the tech bench where I’m working.

Customer: “Can you just make sure it turns on?”

Me: “Sure thing.”

I power it up, show him the startup screen, and hand it back. He grabs the charger from the box, looks at the packaging, and makes a face.

Customer: “I don’t need all this crap.”

He starts to walk out with just the laptop and charger, and I mean literally just the laptop and charger. No box/packaging.

Me: “You don’t want the box or the sleeve? It’s useful for transport.”

Customer: “Nah, it’s just trash that takes up space.”

Me: “Sir, it’s raining pretty hard. You might want a bag or—”

He walks straight out the door, bare laptop in one hand, charger in the other, into the downpour. My coworker and I just stare at each other. The next afternoon, he storms back in, laptop in hand.

Customer: “This thing is broken!”

I look at the machine. It won’t power on.

Me: “What seems to be happening?”

Customer: “It just stopped working. I want a replacement.”

I glance at my coworker, who was here yesterday, too.

Me: “Sir, you left the store yesterday carrying it in the rain without the box or any protection.”

Customer: “So? It’s supposed to work!”

Me: “Electronics and heavy rain don’t mix. That would be considered accidental damage, which isn’t covered.”

Customer: “If you don’t replace this, I’m calling my sister at the BBB!”

Me: “You’re welcome to contact whoever you like, sir, but they’re going to hear the same thing: laptops aren’t waterproof, and we literally watched you take it out into a storm.”

Customer: “Well… well… you should have stopped me if you knew it was gonna brick my laptop!”

Me: “I tried to explain, sir, but you seemed quite sure of what you were doing.”

Customer: “Well then, maybe you should… You should…”

Coworker: “Sir, are you trying to find the words that say we made a mistake for assuming you knew what you were doing, without making you sound like an idiot?”

Customer: “I… I’m reporting this place!” *Storms out.*

I look at my coworker with a sense of awe.

Coworker: “What? I’m like, three months from retiring. F*** this place and f*** those customers.”

Working with him for the next three months is going to be so interesting…

Related:
Laptop Flop, Part 44
Laptop Flop, Part 43
Laptop Flop, Part 42
Laptop Flop, Part 41
Laptop Flop, Part 40

The first time I delivered pizza during a heavy snowstorm, I was really in my element. I grew up in Colorado, so icy driving conditions were a focus of driving education. But my coworkers were mostly Southerners and weren’t used to heavy snow.

As I was driving, I wouldn’t go faster than 30 MPH. And if a particular curve in the road looked more hazardous, I would take my foot off the gas and just let the idle speed of my engine power me through, usually at 10-15 MPH.

At the end of the night, I had great tips since I was able to get to customers’ homes in good time. As I was getting ready to check out for the evening, I saw another dejected driver (DD) in the staff training room. I struck up a conversation with him.

Me: “Hey, [DD], what’s wrong?”

DD: “I skidded off the curve on Old Mill Road and nearly fell into the creek. And there aren’t any tow trucks available. They’re all busy with other accidents all over.”

Me: “Ooh, that sucks. Hope your car isn’t too damaged.”

DD: “Y’know the worst part. As I was climbing out of my car, I looked up at the road and saw you coming straight at me. I was bracing for you to skid off, too, but then you turned along the curve super-slow and kept on going. Man, where’d you learn to drive in this stuff?”

Me: “Colorado. It’s almost a requirement to get a license there.”

This story reminded me of something that happened during my college career.

The state of Michigan has two parts: a lower peninsula that gets pretty chilly north-Midwest weather, and the upper peninsula that gets freezing wind whipping down from Canada and massive amounts of snow. I grew up in the upper part, but was going to school in the lower part.

Freshman year, moving into the dorms, I met my roommate, who was really excited to be experiencing an American winter. He was already feeling kind of chilly. It was late August and over 80 °F (27 °C), so I asked where he was from and if he had a winter coat. Turned out he was from Jamaica, and he proudly showed off a light windbreaker.

Me: “Okay… First thing tomorrow, we’re heading down to the Army Surplus store and getting you a real coat, a hat, some gloves, and some boots.”

Sophomore year, new dorm, new roommate! And a similar story, except this time they were from Guatemala and didn’t even think to bring a windbreaker.

Army Surplus store trip for coat, hat, gloves, and boots. 

Junior year! I’m out of the dorms and into half of a duplex apartment with a shared living room and kitchen. I lived there for two years and had two different housemates over the duration, each of whom had transferred in from out of state.

The first one was from Miami, Florida and had never left their state before.

Army Surplus store trip.

The second was an international student from Hokkaido in northern Japan. Finally, somewhere that gets snow! But his folks were in the diplomatic service, so he’d grown up in Tahiti.

I provided a lot of business to that surplus store.