Me: ‘Im sure you don’t want to entertain me for the next X minutes!’ Cust: ‘Actually I do’.

So, I don’t really post many actual posts but do lurk in comments usually. This one though, was a brightness to my week and I honestly wanted to share it.

Background, so I work in tech support. I am a F, so while I’ve NEVER seen it as an issue, I’m sure you can imagine there are some who will, and I’ve definitely gotten the ‘Go get a man for me sweetie, he’ll understand better.’. But this was the other end of the spectrum and not in a creepy way.

I’ve also been serving in customer service since ’07 and actual call centres for 7+ of those years. I’m Irish and in general, as we Irish do, we can sweet talk and dry humour our way out of most situations.

So complex issue with a HD misbehaving. Wouldn’t format cause it couldn’t unmount itself, but it would actually unmount when we tried just not remount?!? So, I did the age old ‘lets turn it off and try again’. What d’ya know? It worked. This is what happened next:

M: is me obvs C: is customer obvs

M: alrighty, so let’s try to reinstall now.

C: oh my god it’s actually going through. Mental!

M: haha I know right! Amazing what turning it off and on can do sometimes. It’s a great hail Mary.

C: I always thought it was a cop out and that’s why I didn’t do it.

M: ah no worries! That’s what we’re here for, I’m paid to think about these things 40 or so hours a week. So, I’m going to leave you to it, (and here comes a famous phrase I use ALOT, it’s in the title and even my manager has encouraged other people to use it) I’m sure you don’t want to be sitting here entertaining me for the next hour or so!

(Now ladies and gents, I usually get a light chuckle or a heavy guffaw at that and we exchange pleasantries, contact details for their support ticket and that’s that. We all move on)

C: um actually I kinda do.

Record scratch

M: huh?

C: you’re pretty fun and obviously knowledgeable. I’d like to keep chatting! Is that ok?

(Side note if a customer asks me to stay I HAVE to as per policy)

M: ah ya haha, you’re pretty knowledgeable yourself! You’ll be grand though! If you get stuck you can call us back.

C: no worries! Thanks for being so helpful.

Ends call. Thank god I wasn’t sitting there for an hour and a bit.