I'm congratulating myself on the fact I never killed soneone today, I had a real influx of idiot customers when trying to deal with every other thing that went wrong today but somehow I kept my cool and am now at home relaxing and not in a police cell.
One I can remember I regret because I wasn't nice and told them they were wasting my time. I shouldntve done it. I was in a travel call centre. A woman made me look for hours for a holiday to Benidorm in July, she wouldn't give me a budget (fair enough). I spent hours working on comm only. Found her the best offer available and she came back saying she had been offered the same deal for £59 and I needed to beat it. You can barely go 1 way for that. She lied, and wasted my time when I had bills to pay. I told her.
I'm generally OK unless people try it on with me, and that's when I snap.
I used to do tech support for an ISP back in the days of dialup and we also handled any overspill from billing. One day I got a call from a woman who had rang on the billing line which automatically kicked my average call time (ACT) into effect. With the ACT being kicked into effect it meant I had around 5 minutes to do the security checks, get her account details up, diagnose the problem and then resolve it (tech support proper had an ACT but it was a lot more generous, and I don't think I ever went above it). As most of the time this would require a reboot I knew I was onto a loser instantly as we had bonuses paid for staying under our ACT.
She only wanted me to send an engineer out because she couldn't plug her phone back into the wall. I spent around half an hour explaining to her that if she needed and engineer then she needed to call BT and that there would probably be a charge, and there was no chance of getting an engineer out the same day anyway. She assumed that as she had the magic box on the wall that gave her cheaper calls that we were responsible for the land line as well. I asked her how she was getting through to us if she had no phone connected and it turned out she was using a neighbours line, so I asked her to ask her neighbour to connect it for her and ended the call after giving her my name (I had to if it was requested). The call had taken over 20 minutes to handle.
About 15 minutes later she comes back through having rang the billing number and asked to be put back through to me (cue the ACT kicking in again). Apparently her neighbour couldn't manage it either and we were back at needing an engineer. I made sure she was using a standard BT socket and not something else and once I'd made sure I explained again to her that she needed BT. She continued arguing the toss with me and the call ended again around the 20 minute mark. Around every 15-20 minutes I had this woman calling the billing line and I was handling a call that lasted around 20 minutes each time. On the third call I had a look to see what the details were on the account just in case it was a mystery shopper/quality assurance call as all the details would be computerised and not using call centre IDs, but she was a real customer. Around 4pm, with my ACT beyond salvaging for the day, and possibly the week, I told her that she didn't need to plug the phone back into the wall and that she needed to remove the box as well. When she asked why I said "Because you're clearly too stupid and retarded to use a phone, and in my honest opinion you shouldn't be let out on your own.". Then the hysterics started. Her husband would batter her, she wouldn't be able to contact her family as they lived miles away and whatever else excuse she could think of. I just sat there with a big grin on my face as I went through the cancelling process. I was massively surprised not to be reprimanded or sacked for it.
The only other time I lost it was when one of my mates opened a nightclub. As he knows I can handle myself he asked me would I mind being a door picker (suss out the ones who shouldn't be allowed in the club) if he was short of staff (this was before you needed a SIA licence). There was a guy in the queue who'd turned up dressed in sportswear and looked like he was out for a fight so I told him to leave the queue as he wasn't getting in. It was annoying because I had to unhook a barrier to let him out, but although he was a bit pissed off about it he seemed to handle it OK and went on his way. About an hour later he was back in the queue with the same result from me, and telling him he was now banned. A short time later he's trying it on again and I reached the end of my tether. This time I didn't bother moving the barrier and just dragged him over it. He made the stupid mistake of taking a wild swing at me while his legs were coming over the barrier so I just let go of him and jumped back. At that point gravity did his job and he went face first into the floor, breaking his nose and knocking a few front teeth out. I was just glad the police were watching it all unfold and saw him try to punch me so he couldn't complain that I deliberately face planted him.
Thankfully, I rarely have to come face to face with idiots much more, but when I do I generally just give them a creepy look and smile which seems to unnerve them now.
Yep - both whilst working in a shop and in a call centre. I'm pretty easy going - but sometimes you get one customer who just goes at you - and you end up biting back.
Nine years in a call centre, how I survived it at times beats me, but I did and I am now in a less stressful job. I think one way of looking at it is you'll never see the person who is shouting at you, so they can't physically harm you.
However, I did work in a mini mart for 7 weeks, which was even more hellish, and on a few occasions had customers rant abuse at me for nothing. On my last day I was on the filling station bit and two Astras were at the same pump and I asked which one was which as the customer couldn't remember which one. I got called an effing idiot and are you effing blind, before he threw ten pounds in my face, to which I said, crash and die. I knew the job was over so didn't care.
I work for my local council which of course means everyone is allowed to speak to me like I'm nothing. I'm in Environmental Services so our department issue fixed penalties to people caught littering or dumping rubbish. Our officers visit and attempt to educate people who have been complained about for dumping rubbish, letting their dogs bark through the night and all sorts of other environmental related nuisances.
I get verbal abuse almost on a daily basis and I've been threatened with physical abuse a bunch of times. I had one guy punch the glass on our reception window to try and get at me because I wouldn't "phone the head guy and get him down here right now", and not long after that someone actually spat through the slots on the glass onto one of my colleagues. I speak to quite a lot of drunk people and they're always fun to try and get off the phone. Old people tend to be really nasty, perhaps driven that way by loneliness I'm not too sure. I've even had a councillor swear at me before! My favourite abusive call was about a year ago when a man, well known to us and the police for being a bit of a gangster, phoned up all upset about a calling card he'd received from one of our officers. He couldn't tell me who had left the card or why they might have done so but that didn't stop him from calling me every name under the sun and telling me that "he knows someone high up in the council, someone who can find out who you are and where you live!" which led to a fun afternoon of filling in incident forms etc.
I've never lost it with anyone though because we're not allowed to be assertive or to stand up for ourselves against someone who is threatening us or being abusive. Our managers much prefer us to sit and have someone screaming dogs abuse down the phone at us than risk having a complaint coming into the department.
I sound really whingy here, but really I don't care about any of the above. I've been working there for five years now so I have no soul left in me !!!!
I lost it with a difficult customer once but she had just thrown a cup of coffee* in my direction. It turned out it wasn't coffee (see below) but the liquid was in a coffee cup. Most of it landed on the till thankfully but some of it got my arm.
I was working in a cinema that had a separate tea and coffee counter. The cinema was within an out of town shopping/entertainment complex, and the complex had a building security team.
In a nutshell:
- I hadn't served the customer, another colleague had and they'd not worked on the coffee counter before;
- It's likely the coffee machine was to blame although my colleague probably hadn't checked the coffee was ok before putting the lid on the cup;
- It turned out the customer had actually been given a cup of milk and water;
- I dealt with the fallout. Tried to find out why this woman was saying things like, "you lot are taking the f****** p***, trying to rip me off, you're having a laugh, you don't want to mess with me, I want a refund.' Eventually I managed to interrupt the ranting and say, "I need to know what exactly is wrong first before I can ask a manager to process a refund, if we can do that."
The response from the customer was to throw the cup in my direction. It's worth noting she took the lid off the cup before she threw it.
I was shocked, went ballistic and shouted, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?" Only then did she explain she'd asked for coffee and been given a cup with water and milk in it.
IIRC I said, "and that justified throwing it at me? Are you insane?" I told my colleague to go and get a manager and tell them to call the police and building security in case the customer ran off.
The customer overheard me and said, "I ain't going anywhere until I get my money."
Another customer came along to be served and I tried to deal with her. Unfortunately the nutcase continued causing a scene and started telling customers "don't waste your money here, they'll rip you off."
At that point I lost control and shouted at the woman to shut up, leave other customers alone and wait quietly until the manager arrived or I'd get security to come over and take her away. She shut up thankfully!
The manager came over, I explained what had happened and then said, "and now I'm going on my break" and walked off. I could hear the customer continuing to cause a scene as I walked away.
I ended up writing my letter of resignation when I got home.
Comments
I used to do tech support for an ISP back in the days of dialup and we also handled any overspill from billing. One day I got a call from a woman who had rang on the billing line which automatically kicked my average call time (ACT) into effect. With the ACT being kicked into effect it meant I had around 5 minutes to do the security checks, get her account details up, diagnose the problem and then resolve it (tech support proper had an ACT but it was a lot more generous, and I don't think I ever went above it). As most of the time this would require a reboot I knew I was onto a loser instantly as we had bonuses paid for staying under our ACT.
She only wanted me to send an engineer out because she couldn't plug her phone back into the wall. I spent around half an hour explaining to her that if she needed and engineer then she needed to call BT and that there would probably be a charge, and there was no chance of getting an engineer out the same day anyway. She assumed that as she had the magic box on the wall that gave her cheaper calls that we were responsible for the land line as well. I asked her how she was getting through to us if she had no phone connected and it turned out she was using a neighbours line, so I asked her to ask her neighbour to connect it for her and ended the call after giving her my name (I had to if it was requested). The call had taken over 20 minutes to handle.
About 15 minutes later she comes back through having rang the billing number and asked to be put back through to me (cue the ACT kicking in again). Apparently her neighbour couldn't manage it either and we were back at needing an engineer. I made sure she was using a standard BT socket and not something else and once I'd made sure I explained again to her that she needed BT. She continued arguing the toss with me and the call ended again around the 20 minute mark. Around every 15-20 minutes I had this woman calling the billing line and I was handling a call that lasted around 20 minutes each time. On the third call I had a look to see what the details were on the account just in case it was a mystery shopper/quality assurance call as all the details would be computerised and not using call centre IDs, but she was a real customer. Around 4pm, with my ACT beyond salvaging for the day, and possibly the week, I told her that she didn't need to plug the phone back into the wall and that she needed to remove the box as well. When she asked why I said "Because you're clearly too stupid and retarded to use a phone, and in my honest opinion you shouldn't be let out on your own.". Then the hysterics started. Her husband would batter her, she wouldn't be able to contact her family as they lived miles away and whatever else excuse she could think of. I just sat there with a big grin on my face as I went through the cancelling process. I was massively surprised not to be reprimanded or sacked for it.
The only other time I lost it was when one of my mates opened a nightclub. As he knows I can handle myself he asked me would I mind being a door picker (suss out the ones who shouldn't be allowed in the club) if he was short of staff (this was before you needed a SIA licence). There was a guy in the queue who'd turned up dressed in sportswear and looked like he was out for a fight so I told him to leave the queue as he wasn't getting in. It was annoying because I had to unhook a barrier to let him out, but although he was a bit pissed off about it he seemed to handle it OK and went on his way. About an hour later he was back in the queue with the same result from me, and telling him he was now banned. A short time later he's trying it on again and I reached the end of my tether. This time I didn't bother moving the barrier and just dragged him over it. He made the stupid mistake of taking a wild swing at me while his legs were coming over the barrier so I just let go of him and jumped back. At that point gravity did his job and he went face first into the floor, breaking his nose and knocking a few front teeth out. I was just glad the police were watching it all unfold and saw him try to punch me so he couldn't complain that I deliberately face planted him.
Thankfully, I rarely have to come face to face with idiots much more, but when I do I generally just give them a creepy look and smile which seems to unnerve them now.
However, I did work in a mini mart for 7 weeks, which was even more hellish, and on a few occasions had customers rant abuse at me for nothing. On my last day I was on the filling station bit and two Astras were at the same pump and I asked which one was which as the customer couldn't remember which one. I got called an effing idiot and are you effing blind, before he threw ten pounds in my face, to which I said, crash and die. I knew the job was over so didn't care.
I get verbal abuse almost on a daily basis and I've been threatened with physical abuse a bunch of times. I had one guy punch the glass on our reception window to try and get at me because I wouldn't "phone the head guy and get him down here right now", and not long after that someone actually spat through the slots on the glass onto one of my colleagues. I speak to quite a lot of drunk people and they're always fun to try and get off the phone. Old people tend to be really nasty, perhaps driven that way by loneliness I'm not too sure. I've even had a councillor swear at me before! My favourite abusive call was about a year ago when a man, well known to us and the police for being a bit of a gangster, phoned up all upset about a calling card he'd received from one of our officers. He couldn't tell me who had left the card or why they might have done so but that didn't stop him from calling me every name under the sun and telling me that "he knows someone high up in the council, someone who can find out who you are and where you live!" which led to a fun afternoon of filling in incident forms etc.
I've never lost it with anyone though because we're not allowed to be assertive or to stand up for ourselves against someone who is threatening us or being abusive. Our managers much prefer us to sit and have someone screaming dogs abuse down the phone at us than risk having a complaint coming into the department.
I sound really whingy here, but really I don't care about any of the above. I've been working there for five years now so I have no soul left in me
I was working in a cinema that had a separate tea and coffee counter. The cinema was within an out of town shopping/entertainment complex, and the complex had a building security team.
In a nutshell:
- I hadn't served the customer, another colleague had and they'd not worked on the coffee counter before;
- It's likely the coffee machine was to blame although my colleague probably hadn't checked the coffee was ok before putting the lid on the cup;
- It turned out the customer had actually been given a cup of milk and water;
- I dealt with the fallout. Tried to find out why this woman was saying things like, "you lot are taking the f****** p***, trying to rip me off, you're having a laugh, you don't want to mess with me, I want a refund.' Eventually I managed to interrupt the ranting and say, "I need to know what exactly is wrong first before I can ask a manager to process a refund, if we can do that."
The response from the customer was to throw the cup in my direction. It's worth noting she took the lid off the cup before she threw it.
I was shocked, went ballistic and shouted, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?" Only then did she explain she'd asked for coffee and been given a cup with water and milk in it.
IIRC I said, "and that justified throwing it at me? Are you insane?" I told my colleague to go and get a manager and tell them to call the police and building security in case the customer ran off.
The customer overheard me and said, "I ain't going anywhere until I get my money."
Another customer came along to be served and I tried to deal with her. Unfortunately the nutcase continued causing a scene and started telling customers "don't waste your money here, they'll rip you off."
At that point I lost control and shouted at the woman to shut up, leave other customers alone and wait quietly until the manager arrived or I'd get security to come over and take her away. She shut up thankfully!
The manager came over, I explained what had happened and then said, "and now I'm going on my break" and walked off. I could hear the customer continuing to cause a scene as I walked away.
I ended up writing my letter of resignation when I got home.
The thing to do is to calmly carry on... and then send the lads round to 'have a word' with the offending person!