I have to put you on hold to transfer you!

So this is from an accountants I worked for a few years back.

This particular customer was rude from the word go. He had a strong accent and accused my colleague of being racist for asking him to repeat himself. He then was racist towards her, making her cry. She terminated the call due to abusive language. He called back and got me.

The first ten minutes were him screaming at me about ‘that c**t that disconnected me’. I asked him to tone down his swearing and he wouldn’t, just told me that if I ended the call he’d call back until we ‘bothered to deal with him’.

Finally he calmed down, and that’s when the real fun started:

M: Me AC: Angry Customer

AC: Right, so, now that I’ve had my say we can get to my actual query. I want to speak to [accountant], he’s dealing with my tax query.

M: Sure, I can see if he’s available. Are you ok for me to put you on hold while I-

AC: No. I don’t want you to put me on hold, I want you to bring him over to your phone.

M: … I’m sorry, but I’d need to put you on hold to-

AC: Are you deaf? I don’t WANT to be PUT ON HOLD. If you put me on hold, I’ll put the phone down and call back.

M: Sir, I literally just need to place you on hold to speak to the accountant. I can’t leave you off hold on my phone, that’s against our privacy rules.

AC: Well you’re going to have to do it.

M: -Thinking no I bloody don’t- If you wish to speak to the accountant, I just need to put you on hold for a minute. Breaking privacy rules here would risk my job.

AC: -starts yelling unintelligibly until- I DON’T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT YOUR JOB, I DON’T WANT TO BE PUT ON HOLD!

At this point I’m close to tears, we’ve been going around in circles for close to twenty minutes.

Me: I can not do that. I have to transfer you to the accounting line. It’s that simple, and I can not help further under the current situation.

AC: -after a minute of silence- Ohh fuck you! -hangs up-

I went to tell the accountant, and he sighed and said ‘Well that should be fun’. He left a loooong email about me and the original colleague he spoke to. My manager took one listen to the call, laughed and said “How deluded can you be?”