So I do tech support in an inbound call center for a large nationwide ISP.
The other week I had a married couple do the typical speakerphone call. The occasional good cop/bad cop thing where the person primarily doing all the talking (in this case the husband) was all reasonable and calm,while his wife was raging out and screaming deranged insults at me in the background.
In this case, it was about their cable tv service. They had 4 tvs. 3 of which were working just fine. The 4th had an error code that the husband read off to me.
Since I do this job 5 days a week, 40+ hours a day, I instantly recognise this code as one that often means there is an issue with the coax cable connection. I ask the husband if number 1, the coax cable is screwed into the box nice and tight, and number 2, have they moved any furniture in this room lately?
Meanwhile the wife is screeching about how im a fucking idiot who doesn’t know anything and that her husband needs to tell me to stop asking questions and just “fix it now” or send someone out to collect “all this crap” because if she can’t watch her show that comes on in 7 minutes, then they are cancelling all services with us.
I reply by asking if she can perhaps watch her show on one of the other 3 tv’s in the household that we have already established are working, because yes, this is probably going to take more than 7 minutes.
Her husband responds to me by saying that while they haven’t moved any furniture,they do have pets. A dog and a cat. And also that the dog tends to chase the cat. And that this has frequently involved their young puppy chasing the cat behind this particular tv and the 2 pets getting tangled up in the cords.
And he surmised that this likely resulted in the error code he has just read off to me.
The wife ignores my question about the other 3 tv’s that are currently working just fine and starts to screech and wail that, first of all, she has to leave the room immediately, because watching this cable box reboot is just too “hurtful” to her.
And then, she of course does not leave.
She instead scoops up one of her precous furbabies and proceeds to aggressively, hatefully babytalk this poor creature for the next 8 minutes about what a worthless piece of shit I am from the mean old ISP/cable company to DARE blame our bullshit issues on poor Mr fluffums and also what a two faced worthless piece of shit “Daddy” was for daring to suggest that precious BamBam and Mr Fluffums could have possibly caused such an issue when its clearly just a typical ploy from my company to screw her over and drive her insane.
The husband completely ignores his screeching hateful babytalking wife in the background and proceeds to make pleasant small talk with me during the reboot which seems to further infuriate the wife.
At the end of the call when the box finished it’s boot up cycle and everything was all GTG, the husband said to me, very quietly and calmly: “I want to thank you for your patience, professionalism and your time”
Which apparently caused the wife to try and break glass with the pitch of her new screech for emphasis.
I just followed the husbands lead and said my usual scripted closing etc.
I take a lot of calls with crazy, angry, entitled people.
That crazy hateful baby talk for 8 minutes straight will probably stick in my memory forever tho. I’m actually glad the husband was there. Since I’ve been doing this type of work for nearly a decade, I like to think that I’m a veteran and that no customers’ bizarre psych issues can even phase me at this point. But that lady seriously creeped me the fuck out.
Like how do you not know or care how you come off to people that way? How in the world does someone like that see themselves as any way rational or what?
I guess that’s rhetorical.
I’m a longtime lurker here and this was the first of recent calls that I actually felt was worthy of sharing.
Cos Holy shit lady, wtf?
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