A point of curiosity…

I’ve been digging this sub so far, thanks to all who gave feedback on my previous post. Since my first contribution was negative, I thought I’d go in a different direction with this one. I assume we’ve all been taught tactics to politely “wrap it up” with particularly chatty customers, because we’ve all got numbers and quotas and blah blah blah…

That being said, has anyone ever just said damn the numbers and gone on a conversational joyride with a slightly senile and/or extremely garrulous consumer just for the heck of it? The other week, I got this 90-something-year-old lady on the phone who very early on in the call stated her intent to place an order. After I’d gotten everything in her cart, however, she’d already begun leading the conversation in some pretty non-shoe-related directions including (but not limited to) the Chernobyl disaster, how New York used to be in the 40s, her role as a science and chemistry teacher, during which she (allegedly) had a very adversarial relationship with the school administrators and repeatedly came close to blowing up the school. I subtly tried to redirect her a few times, but once we were 40 minutes into the call I just kinda said “f-it,” and let her take me down the rabbit trail. We talked about past presidents, the development of race and gender relations she’d witnessed throughout her life, and her debatably-legitimate government research credentials (she told me that, in addition to teaching science, she also helped lead research on various DOD technology/weapons/explosives). It was, all told, an 1h 45m call, and I was fortunately not given any crap from my sup. She did, after all, end up placing the order, so I was technically still doing my job lol. Obviously I usually try to keep conversations fairly brief, but just wondering who else has indulged a rambling caller just for personal amusement.