Voicing Your Concerns

I was working at a call center for a few months after getting my BA. I had a few calls that were really bad; I worked in billing for a major cable and Internet provider, and people would call to yell if their bill went up even a dime. One story sticks out to me, though.

This man called in to go over the charges on his account to see if he could get any refunds.

I pulled up his account, and there were a little over $700 in charges for on-demand p*rnography. As per the company policy about on-demand movies, we have to go over every title and tell them how long it was watched for — if they didn’t watch more than the first few minutes, we can give them a refund.

I, a woman, had to read out all the titles of the dozens of p*rn flicks this man had downloaded — they had all been watched in entirety. There were some pretty racy titles. It was hard for me to keep a straight face and a steady voice, but I pulled through! It was a slow day, so my coworkers were gathered around to listen in on this fiasco. I don’t blame them.

The customer was nice and polite throughout the call, but he was obviously breathing pretty heavily, grunting occasionally, too.

When I had finished, he said, “Thank you… You have a very sexy voice.” I didn’t know how to respond to that, and I was already pretty flustered.

When the call finally ended — he didn’t get a single refund and paid the bill in full — I pulled up the notes section on his account. Apparently, he does this every month.