Anyone who knows that I'm loud and obnoxious should try sitting next to my seat-mate at work. I actually bought ear plugs today and I'm pretty sure she still won't get the hint to shut the fuck up.

Lio,

I love a good story about someone who tries to make someone out to be in an idiot, but in the process only manages to show what a fucking moron he himself is. I'm surprised that anyone who calls the marketing department to ask about a country code even has the opposable digits necessary to operate a telephone.

Anyway, I've been an angry customer myself lately. Last Sunday morning my modem burned out. I called AT&T, they tell me it's dead and that I need a new one. I get a new modem and wireless router (separate units, unlike my last one, so if one shits the bed, I only have to replace one of the two). I get the wireless network up and a day later, I can't get on line again. I call AT&T, and they tell me that the modem is working, now it's the line. I've had similar problems on and off for months, by the way. They finally send a tech out to fix it-our wire was touching another wire and this was causing the problem. We're finally out of the woods, I hope, but the real pain in the ass in all of this was that my wife has finals for her on line classes this past week! What a coincidence that my modem shits out AND I have a line problem all at once at the worst possible time! If these were good coincidences I'm sure people would say that it was a miracle and say that god was looking out for me. I'd like to take the chance to tell god to fuck himself for this and many other slights.

Ya know, working in the customer service industry I take certain things for granted. Like, everyday, I know I will speak with at least one asshole, pissed off about something that has nothing to do with me or my department. I'm ok with this, it goes part and parcel with the job. I am paid to get screamed at by assholes, and that is my job. I'm good with that because normally I realize they are angry at my company and not attacking me personally. But every once in a while a customer will strike one of my nerves, and I fire back.

So the other day a guy calls me completely interrupting my greeting saying, "I need the country code for [name of small country deleted], Do you even know what that is?" Now, normally I would kindly inform him I could help him with his request (even though I'm in Marketing, and this is a request for Customer Service), but this hit pretty much the only nerve that I have when speaking with a customer. The assumption that I am a moron.

Roughly 80% of people in my department are college educated, the other 20% have been at the job so long they are better at the job than me. Basically when you call into customer service, or our department in particular, you are not speaking with an idiot. This asshole was assuming that just because he wasn't speaking with a doctor or lawyer, he was speaking with some sort of GED reject. He was basically assuming that I dropped out of school before I could attend 10th grade Geography.

So, before he could get the "S" sound out in "Do you even know what that is?", I fired back "It's a small island in [geographical area deleted]. To which he said "Oh." I said "Here's your country code". The kicker is he didn't even want to know that tidbit of information for anything even related to our company. Dick.

I hear that, Caniprokis... I hate soccer moms. All day I deal with these twats who buy Blackberrys because all their other twat soccer mom friends have them. Then when they can't figure out how to use them because their last phone was a pair of tin cans and some string, they call us up and scream at us like we're the assholes! These douche bags generally purchase these phones because they they have a full keyboard for texting their twat friends, they have a big screen which they need because they're getting old and need large pictures on their phone, and because you can get them in pink. They never stop to think that these are amazingly sophisticated devices that might take more than 20 minutes of your precious fucking time to learn how to use. Your average Blackberry has more computing power, RAM and online capabilities than my first desktop had. Then they're all like "you mean I have pay extra for a feature to use this phone." YES! If we allowed you to take a Blackberry without a data feature, with the sheer amount of times it checks for emails per minute, you could easily rack up thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in data charges in one month. (Remember that $.02 vs. $.002 conversation you sent me that one time, Calliander?) Not to mention the fact that if you aren't using this in conjunction with Email or the web there is no fucking reason to have one. Fucking soccer moms are the bane of my goddamn existence.

I am the starter and finisher in many cases... or at least used to be when I was doing more business with random individuals. It makes things especially interesting when someone will try to escalate an issue up without realising that they've been talking to me the whole time. I've had a number of people tell me things like "Wow, you're a much better rep than the last guy I dealt with. He was a total loser, you should try to get him fired".

I'd rather not have any customers to bother me, but since they're the ones with the money I have to put up with them. It's fun trying to find that line of what's just enough to give them to keep them happy.

Here's a situation that customer service has got to love:

Yeah, I just recently got put into that position of my job. Sometimes I'm the guy that gets calls sent to him when a rep can't handle it. I'm the next step up on the food chain if you will. Most of the time it's some stupid little trivial thing that makes the customer happy that the prior representative has forgotten to offer, because as Calliander stated earlier, I'm smarter than about 75% of the people I work with. And it's nice to do that. But I can really identify with Stone. It's kinda fun and empowering when you get those customers that won't calm down and you can be all like "I'm sorry sir but your stupid/irate rant is going no further up the chain of command, have a nice day." There are times when the customers can be satisfied by reasonable means, and then there are times when you have to lay the cards on the table and say "This is what we offer, you can take it or leave it. You can shop our competitors but you are not going to receive the ridiculous thing you have requested." Every once in a while you get the customer who has made some retarded interpretation of a promotion we've offered, then they get pissed off when you tell them what a sane person would have gleened from the promotion. Those are my favorite, mainly because we get to terminate the conversation per company policy. Then I get to think of them pulling their hair out over a dumbass interpretation of a promotion that was worded by an army of corporate lawyers. Then I get to laugh when I think about them trying to take that shit to arbitration against said army of corporate lawyers, oh the smiles...

I'm usually 'the finisher' when we've got a customer that's being an asshole. It's good

One of the things my department's responsible for is maintaining the sales tax exemption certificates for customers. The laws are stupidly complex, so customers will pretty regularly screw up during the process of getting a certificate together. Some of the shit is pretty basic...forgetting to fill out any of the spaces (what they're going to buy, what it is they're going to do) - annoying, not a big deal. Most of the time, I just let the small details go (the state doesn't really pay attention to the certificates, anyways) in order to be convenient to them. Every so often, though, we'll get someone trying to give us an egregiously incorrect certificate or something like that - and when one of the women in the department tries to explain the mistake to the customer, the customer will go off on them, saying that they don't know what we're doing, etc.

That's where I step in...and spend 10 minutes trying to say, in a nice way, "no one else has ever come back to you about this because no one else understands this state's retarded sales tax laws" or "your accountant said the certificate was okay because your accountant is a slack-jawed idiot". Most of these guys just need to hear an authoritative sounding voice. I've had a couple of situations where the customer's come back at me, though, and I've gotten involved in shouting matches, a lot of "look, I'm not going to transfer you to anyone else, I make the decisions about this, so this is where this conversation is going to end", one time where I spent 30 minutes on the phone with some guy not saying anything, just listening to each other breathe, shit like that. It's fun.

STUN!

You know what I hate? When you're dealing with a customer or client or what have you... and they start bitching at you about the price of a good or service you're providing, or better yet try to haggle. What the hell? This type of shit may benefit you on some back corner market in Marrakesh or some type of product with an extraordinarily high profit margin like a car or a house, but we live in America and the price is the price is the price. My favorite is when I'm a Starbucks or some such shit some A-hole starts flapping his gums to the poor kid behind the counter about the outrageous price of the coffee. C'mon now! First off, do you think that making an ass of yourself to a 17 year old kid is going to change the price of a cup of coffee set by a multi billion dollar corporation? Do you think that yelling at this 17 year old kid is going to make him say "Ya know what? That coffee IS too expensive, I don't think our company realizes that! I'm gonna hop a concord to the company headquarters and let them know!". No, that 17 year old kid is going to laugh at you behind your back and call you a Boner.

Now I work as a customer service rep for a similar multi billion dollar conglomerate, and I run into these jack holes all the time. And it seems that people can't get it through their thick fucking skulls that we can't customize something made to service a consumer base of MILLIONS of people on a one by one personal level. I had one stupid twat the other day who wanted me to change a nationwide advertising campaign because a free predictive program failed to predict something! That's the nature of a predictive system, they aren't perfect, other wise we'd have sold the patent on this AI to the fucking pentagon! Or ya get the ass holes who are all like "Oh, can't ya throw this in there because I'm such a good customer?" No, I can't the system won't let me. Besides what the fuck do I look like, the fucking cable guy who's gonna give you free HBO if you slide me a 20? Go fuck yourself, you'll get what we offer to all our customers... Because all of our customers are good customers.

But it's nowhere near as bad as when I worked retail. I used to work for a high end audio store and I was trying to sell a $4000 home theater system to this douche bag middle age wannabe biker ass hole. I was going through my whole spiel about the system's benefits and all the possibilities it presented. Then this cock holder goes to me, "I've got $3500 cash right now. Deal?" Well, that's nice it doesn't change the fact that the price of the system is still $4000 dollars. And no, I'm not impressed that you ride on the outside your vehicle.

All in all I'd say the old addage of "The customer is always right" has been an excuse for people to be rude, crass, and generally unpleasant for far too long. The customer is entitled the best service that can be provided to them, that does not mean that the customer has the right to be a complete douche bag when that best is not good enough. We live in a free capitalist economy and numbers do the talking. If the issue you're torqued about is worth abusing some poor pawn of the company then the issue will eventually show up in the numbers and be corrected. If it isn't corrected then yelling, cajoling, or rangling with some poor schmuck won't help matters. Go fuck yourself.

Well, had my first week of work at the new job. I don't know if I'll be as comfortable at this job, but I feel that's a good thing. It'll prompt me to move on faster. In my first week on the floor, I moved $10000 in equipment and today I accounted for 50% of our sales... needless to say they like me. I also sold our most expensive home theater set up right infront of my bosses and the training manager for the northeast. They were amazed that I was moving these products this early on. After six months I get access to their job postings for corporate positions, so I think I may go that route. I crunched the numbers today and I'm making only a little bit more than at Caron's. Of course that doesn't include the benefits and sales bonuses so I guess I'll have to wait and see how that all figures in. Regardless, I don't have to spear chickens or fight with little old ladies...

Posted by Caniprokis:and what has all this gotton me. MORE FUCKING WORK. not disaplinary action that i so craved but just the oposit more respociblitly and people coming to me for anwsers and desisions.

all i wanted really was to get fired so i could collect unemployment for a little while fuck off and play music. instead im a god damned soot after commidity in my department

That is too funny. I was going to suggest a grammar/spell check function, but that post wouldn't be half as good without all of that stuff. It adds character. What have you been up to man, aside from work?

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Drinking, I hope. If you turned a grammar checker on that post you would probably break it.

More responsibility is what you want, right? Is the rebelling thing working, or is that not the type of responsibility you were talking about?

The Move