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TW: homophobia, slurs, death, mention of drugs, (possible) racism, (possible) transphobia
Boy howdy, do I have one hell of a call for you guys. To be honest, it sounds extremely outlandish, and like it can’t possibly be real, but I assure you it is. And it’s even weirder than the one where the guy told me how to summon Bigfoot (a story for another time). On mobile, apologies for formatting and whatnot.
This happened just today, so it’s still fresh in my mind, though I’m sure it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my days. A little backstory: I work in the appliance industry, troubleshooting and selling parts. I’m also AFAB and white, both of these things are relevant to the story.
The call itself started normally enough, I suppose. A call about a dryer, simple enough. There were a lot of “Um”s coming from the guy, but still nothing out of the ordinary. Then he busts out this gem:
“I know women aren’t as dumb as they used to be.”
Oh boy. One of those. I grit my teeth and bear it, asking what it was specifically he needed help with.
“Well, are you actually going to be able to help me, or are you just there to get a paycheck?”
This is when my blood pressure started to rise, and I informed my supervisor we may have an issue. She acknowledged that, and I still tried to help this guy, because I need to be employed. And oh, folks, it gets worse from here.
Apparently, the idler pulley was missing, and he was going on about how it shouldn’t run without one. Which is true. It will heat and turn on, but there will not be enough tension to make the drum spin. So, his conclusion was that someone had opened the machine and taken it.
“I’m pretty religious, and I think most people are f**got devils who are empty inside, and that’s why they do these things.”
My jaw dropped. I have never heard anyone say anything like that so casually to a stranger on the phone. I really did not know how to process this, and I have no idea what I said to that, but it must’ve been work appropriate because I still have a job.
I do my job to the best of my ability, and find this guy his parts. I offer to order them, but he just wants the part numbers. Fine by me, I’m hourly. As I start to give him the numbers, I say P as in Paul. Bad decision on my end.
“Oh I had a cousin Paul. He died of a heroin overdose.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Oh, he was a f**got, I don’t really care.”
I was gobsmacked, just sitting there with my mouth open, when the awful continued.
“You sound like a large African. Have you had trans surgery?”
“No…”
Shortly afterward, the call ended pretty normally, and I immediately called over my supervisor once again to have her listen in. Coincidentally, she happens to be a lesbian, and she forwarded this to the other supervisors and the call center managers. We’ll see how that goes.
I figured I would share this, because it was just so terrible the internet needed to know.
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