You mean I have to sit here and take this abuse?

So, I used to work at a Hilton hotel call center, and one of their policies was that no matter how much verbal abuse was being dished out to us from the caller, we had to sit there and take it. If we disconnected a call, we'd lose our job. Just to further prove that these places are slave mills, they'd make examples of people all the time. The turnover rate was atrocious.

On one hand, it seems like a fairly easy thing to do (deal with the abuse and shrug it off), but honestly, it's difficult. Especially when you're the type of person who actually cares about their work and satisfying your clients.

Believe me you, these people would get nasty. Besides every retard thinking he was a fucking comedian by asking "CAN I TALK TO PARIS HRHRHR," we had to deal with a lot of what they called "diamond members." No, these weren't penis's made from minerals, these were the top hierchy of shit heads who stayed with Hilton frequently. If these guys wanted a room and there wasn't any available, we'd literally bump someone out of their room. These people have enormous egos and talk down to you pretty much the whole time they're talking to you on the phone.

Anybody else here have to either now or in the past, deal with this kind of bullshit? How did you deal with these people?

I wish I would have smoked pot back then. I'm sure that would have helped me deal with it a little better.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I work for a catering company that caters to these high and mighty pieces of garbage. I too wish I smoke pot and then head off to work to go on such a shift. But for now I just grind my teeth and smile away.

The only thought that keeps me sane is that I can quit anytime and make a mess out of leaving during an event just for the hell of it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My brother and sister work on service desk for different companies, and they share your opinion. This work isn't for everyone, actually... according to them, in their office there are certain individuals who specialize in dealing with dickheads. Naturally this heroes count with an unbelievable patience, and are usually invited to dinner by their coworkers.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I work for a Japanese Airline Part-supplying company.

I'm getting new requests in today that reads, "We don't have stock in these aircraft parts anymore and we need it by the end of the year."

So I go on a rampaging duck hunt for this part today for half my day, plead every manufacturer, surplus vendor out there. The manufacturer's normal lead time for making the part is around 35 days. They don't have stock. They SHUT DOWN COMPLETELY from 12/22~01/02. So that inevidebly adds another 12~15 days. The surplus vendors don't have anything in good shape in stock. The best they can do is overhaul a part they've got but that still takes 3 weeks.

So, I tell my customer what the deal is, and they DEMAND they want an answer by tomorrow of a decent part they can get by the end of the year.

You know, someone who can be THIS demanding with COMPLETE and UTTER IGNORANCE of what is possible, plausible, and remotely only possible in a figment of their imagination, is quite astonishing to know they've been in business for 10 years and still haven't gone bankrupt. Talk about HORRIBLE planning, ugh.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Jesus, what cut-throat competition must exist in these businesses.

When someone doesn't like the terms of my company and tries to gain leverage, we just shut 'em down.

I have worked at hotels where I've had phones thrown at me, been pinned against walls, verbally assaulted by the customer, so on. We were not high class enough to take the shit from the people. I was completely permitted to go off if someone went ballistic on me. And I did once or twice.

I think the more you're needlessly charging your customer, the more you have to pony up the customer service and the more abuse your employees take.

I mean, come on. The Hilton? Those customers are PAYING to walk all over employees. If those douches went to a $89/night Motel 6, they wouldn't get "Diamond" service. They'd get the same fucking treatment as anyone else. Sometimes, cheaper IS better.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I worked at a call center over the summer selling swimming pool supplies. I hated it. One of our "guarantees" was free overnight shipping to select regions. If the snobby piece of shit didn't get his chlorine the next day, he'd call enraged (sometimes in the morning even, when the fucking mail hadn't even come yet) accusing me -ME - of false advertising and that we'd lose his business if he didn't get his item immediately. Oh really? Fuck you, you're in the 2-day part of the country, you'll get your shit tomorrow. Like we're going to go out of business because you refuse to buy our shit. Customers have such an inflated sense of their own importance to businesses.

Even though we'd get in big trouble if we were caught doing it, hanging up on raving bastards was immensely satisfying.... then you just have to hope you're not the one who answers when he calls back two minutes later.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Cellius

Customers have such an inflated sense of their own importance to businesses.

This is something I see all the time - and I've always tried to piece things together.

I think it's because big business kisses the asses of so many Americans to get them to buy the company's shit. How much abuse is YOUR company willing to take just to score some business?

You know it's probably useless shit. But the company is kissing your ass anyways, 'cause they want YOUR BUSINESS and they want to be your PRIMARY SERVICE/GOODS PROVIDER.

Of course, once they have you on their line, the ass-kissing will probably reduce!

I think Americans just expect to have their asses kissed at this point.

The customer, however, is not always right.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

The customer, however, is not always right.

Good luck convincing them. That's the mentality they cling to like leeches when something goes wrong. But GOD it feels good to put them in their place.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I couldn't really speak for retail, but my husband work at a Medicare call center. You can just imagine... the calls he get.

From a old man who couldn't remember when he signed up or some old couple like to drag ON the calls about random crap that happened in their lives that has no relative to medicare, or a old hag who refuse to give out her age because of the federal privacy law (that THEY were enforcing) for confirmation that it is her or a dying man who cannot afford the cancer pills begging for his dear life. :\

They pay good though... he just hates the calls. Remember Crash's social security mess? Its mostly in part with that kind of bullshit in Medicare.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Cellius

Good luck convincing them. That's the mentality they cling to like leeches when something goes wrong. But GOD it feels good to put them in their place.

Well, on the other side of the fence, sometimes companies really DO try to fuck their customers.

I have this forum I frequent for bargains and shit - coupons, sales, freebies... all that kind of shit. You should SEE the hoops people are willing to jump through to get something for free. It's insane.

Not to even MENTION the ethics of some of those people. They are exactly those sorts of people who say "The customer is always right" and get away with it, pillaging shops across the nation.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, I knew a lady who'd throw a shit fit over just about anything to get her meal comped every time she went to a restaurant she didn't plan on going back to. It was embarassing to sit a the same table as her, ESPECIALLY when the waiter has that helpless look in their eyes because they're going to get shit for this.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Divest

Yeah, I knew a lady who'd throw a shit fit over just about anything to get her meal comped every time she went to a restaurant she didn't plan on going back to. It was embarassing to sit a the same table as her, ESPECIALLY when the waiter has that helpless look in their eyes because they're going to get shit for this.

I had almost the opposite happen to me and my friends. We went to a Chicago Uno's for some deep dish pizza. We had some beers, an appetizer, and I ordered one regular pizza, and my friend was going to order another for the three of us to share. Only he didn't specify the size, so he got an individual size instead of the regular (feeds 2-3).

So when the waiter came back by he said (verbatium) "Hey, I know i didn't specify, but i wanted a regular instead of the personal size. Sorry about that"

Then the waiter halfway freaked, apologized, and went to talk with the manager. Long story short we wound up getting two regular pizzas, the individual pizza, and the appetizer comped. And everytime a waiter/manager walked by, they apologized to us, and we kept saying "It's no big deal! really! it's okay!" That's pretty much the strangest thing that's ever happened to me in a restaurant.

But yeah, on topic, i've only ever had a girl yell at me when i worked my school's Tech Support Desk - evidently the peoples in back had to reinstall windows on her laptop, there was some mix up and they wiped her drive before she could back it up. She was pretty furious, fortunately I was able to pawn her off on one of the tech-kids who worked in back, who then had to pass her on to the main student tech. By that time she was yelling and cursing, ect. Finally Darrel (main tech) told her "hey. That language isn't going to help anything, so cut it out. Secondly, you signed a waiver stating that we're not responsible for lost data." She actually calmed down and apologized.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

There are actually some companies out there who have their phone systems set up so that their call center agents literally cannot end the call themselves {short of pulling the network cable from their phone I guess}. One of my coworkers was calling for tech support on one of the applications that we run and that came up. It was good for a laugh when he said something to the effect of "sorry but I'm not going to hang up the phone on you and there is nothing you can do about it".

I have to talk to mad/frustrated/rude/whatever people all the time with my job, but most of them are cool about everything. It helps that I am talking to other employees of my company, rather than just the random public. That thing about anonymity and the internet more or less applies when it comes to dealing with customer service on the phone with a large company. People will act like little kids who just got their toy taken away, over the smallest of perceived slights.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

Well, on the other side of the fence, sometimes companies really DO try to fuck their customers.

I have this forum I frequent for bargains and shit - coupons, sales, freebies... all that kind of shit. You should SEE the hoops people are willing to jump through to get something for free. It's insane.

Not to even MENTION the ethics of some of those people. They are exactly those sorts of people who say "The customer is always right" and get away with it, pillaging shops across the nation.

Oh god, you go to fatwallet? I hate those people so much. Whenever I'm at Best Buy and there's a great sale going on with something you know it's going to be poached by FW people. The worst I remember was during the Circuit City $5 game sale a few years ago. I went in, picked up a few games that I was interested in playing (got Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for the PS2 for $5 which is pretty much the best deal ever) and didn't get any duplicates (should've gotten a second Disgaea for my roommate, but I felt guilty taking the last copy). Then some jerkoff wanders up and starts grabbing every $5 game he can. Including the ones that had already gone to $5 at other stores and there wasn't a chance he'd be able to sell for over $1 on ebay. Also seen a FWer in BB buying eight of those tv-dvd player systems which I had just seen a thread for on FW earlier that day saying how to flip it for something like $20 each.

People like them ruin your ability to return gifts without a receipt and pretty much any other nicety that companies try to offer.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm currently working for my college's Service Desk. One of the things I was told early on was that as a non-consumer-oriented center, it does not hold the "customer is always right" credo. We are not to take personal attacks against ourselves or the Service Desk or anything else that may be offensive.

FELIPE NO

Working in food service is probably the WORST for this. I don't work for any major chains, just a small, family owned place back home. I mean, the owner is practically my cousin, so I've never had any problems getting support from him when I need it. Usually, because its a small place that caters to regular customers, I dont have any problems. I chitchat with customers and actually really enjoy my job.

But every now and then, we'll get one person who just has to have everything their way... over the top. A guy who freaked because his burger was taking too long, when it was obvious we were busy (out the door), and could only make so many at a time. We continually apologized, but there was NOTHING we could do about it, unless he wanted a raw burger. Finally, he just walked out. I could go on and on about people like this... but we cant do anything but apologize because 'the customer is always right'. It makes me wish for the days when you could just look at an obnoxious person and tell them to get out of the restaurant.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Temari

Working in food service is probably the WORST for this.

You obviously have never worked in a supermarket. Take you problems and multiply them atleast fourfold.

7 1/2 years in a supermarket really makes you question society. I dealt with some of the most retarded people known to man. The key, I figured out, is less talking back to them, and more just making them feel stupid. Stun them, if you will, with their own stupidity.

The best example of this was when my friend Mike got a bunch of shit from a customer, complaining about dirt on the milk cartons. He said, and I quote: "Well, the best thing you can do is put the empty carton in a pot of boiling water before...... You don't eat the cartons do you?"

The customer sat there, floored, and walked away with the milk.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

When I switched departments at my job, I moved to the call-center. Now keep in mind the mindset of the patients at my pharmacy... infertility patients.

So let's start with the fact that they're stressed out that they can't have kids without help. Tack on the fact that much of the medication can run upwards of $3-4k a month. Then top on to that, and this is the kicker, that basically all the meds they're taking are hormones (growth hormones and sex hormones). Imagine female Barry Bonds all 'roided' up on the other side of the line. That's if you're lucky. The other end of the spectrum is the women who break down on the line at the sound of ANY bad news as if you just shot their 6 week old puppy. And I gotta take every last bit of their shit, 2girls1cup style, enjoying every last moment of it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, working on these kinds of job or not, sometimes we have to smile and ignore all bullshits directed in front of us. That's life; training us to be hypocrites.

I haven't worked, but I'm studying medical study, and for the first semester, the curriculum includes empathy in speaking. The subject is nice though; it basically teaches how to be a good practitioner (in my case, a doctor). You must talk softly to the patient. You must always smile to the patient. You must not interrupt when the patient's talking. You must always listen to what you're patient is saying. Sounds simple and good.

But it turns into a whole hypocrite when a reference book is given. The conversation given is as hypocrite as hell. Everyone feels like being a liar when practicing it in front of the patient and also frustrated, especially when the patient is actually an asshole.

I know that talking to a patient and finding information about them is not easy and you must be really delicate towards them, but in some levels, it's too dreamy.

The conversation taken as reference could be read in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits chapter 5. I feel a bit sick after reading the whole chapter.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

My friend does catering jobs all the time for the bigwigs in Munich, and she says it's horrible. She actually has to burn herself, because God forbid she should use a cloth napkin, and if anything goes against the noble customers' wishes RIGHT THIS INSTANT, all hell breaks loose. She had to work 11-hour shifts without a break.

On the other hand, I also see the other side. I myself am sick of people calling me at home, trying to sell me something...which is illegal in Germany, anyway, but no company ever sticks to this law. My mother was tricked into getting a new phone contract over the phone, although she didn't think she had accepted yet (turns out she had, no contract needed - her yes on the phone was taped by them), and when she made use of her right to withdraw from it within the next 14 days (I wrote the letter for her, she signed it), they simply ignored it. Now, they are pretending they never got it, and won't let her out of the contract.

Or the British Telecom here, who put us on hold for two hours every time we called them, only to refuse to refund us the line rental they had charged us without justification. After thorough investigation and about ten phone conversations (the first 9 nice, the last one sharper and led by somebody else), it turns out their engineer lied on the sheet, saying he had installed a line, when he hadn't, because we had already had one (which we called them about before).

The worst thing are still banks, though. They really try to screw you over, no scruples involved. All this merchandise and all that pressure can make you feel pretty lost as a consumer, because it seems like there isn't a single honest person you can talk to. And I understand that businesses always need to do what's best for them, but there should be certain boundaries. Although it is definitely wrong to be abusive to the person sitting there in the call centre, and it is not their fault, I understand why people may get angry.

How ya doing, buddy?

I work at a movie theater, so it's guaranteed that once a week I hear some customer go off about the prices of everything there. I'm fine with it if the person is just complaining a whole lot. Sometimes though, you get the jerks who demand answers from me, asking why I charge them so much, or how I get off setting the prices so high, as if that is within my control. And these people will also haggle me for discounts and hold up long lines in the process, resulting in several angry customers after that.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by sprouticus

The best example of this was when my friend Mike got a bunch of shit from a customer, complaining about dirt on the milk cartons. He said, and I quote: "Well, the best thing you can do is put the empty carton in a pot of boiling water before...... You don't eat the cartons do you?"

The customer sat there, floored, and walked away with the milk.

This reminds me of the old lady that wanted "No Fat" milk and wouldn't believe the dairy guy that Fat Free is the same thing.

We have to deal with some pretty rude customers sometimes and we're basicly told that if a customer is getting out to hand to call the manager. Don't try to deal with it ourselves. I can't count the number of times I had to call a manager cause some old lady refused to show their ID when they wrote a check. When we're required to see everyone's ID for a check and if we don't follow procedure and it bounces, it comes out of our paycheck.

Most amazing jew boots

Oh, fucking christ do I have stories for this thread.

I worked IT in a public library for 7 long, grueling, hellish years before I finally caught a break and transitioned to the healthcare industry (still IT, but a much better industry/field/market/environment).

IT in public libraries inevitably means that, at some point, you're going to have to help the clueless, idiotic unwashed masses in their (generally futile) efforts to use the public computers. And the worst part was that we had to be sunshine-n-roses to them. Mind you, not too sunshine-n-roses, since it was tax money that funded us and not business revenue, but still. On a small side note, it was always hilarious to listen to the library patrons (who too commonly called themselves "customers") threaten to "take their business to another library." Whatever, shithead.

So anyway, being paid to be nice to people sucks. Being paid to be nice to stupid people sucks a whole helluva lot. And being paid to be nice to stupid people who do not fully realize the extent of their stupidity, and all the while being painfully aware of exactly the magnitude of idiot you're addressing, sucks to a degree few can properly fathom (about as few as exist stupid people who understand the degree of their own stupidity...bizarrely enough, it sucks about as much as these users were stupid).

And I need to clarify one thing here. This isn't "smug IT guy calling users idiots." Certainly there was an atmosphere of that, but it mostly was reserved for other library employees who were more like the typical clueless user you hear about in all those apocryphal stories about IT departments. The public users, though...*sob*...oh, god, the public users. Genuinely, truly, mind-bogglingly idiotic. And insane. To varying levels but certainly still insane.

We had the histrionic: A lady, initials of M.F. (I know, I know, too easy, but those really were the initials), would come in about once a week to use the computers to do her resumé or some shit like that. She always carried a fucking 10-pack of floppies, swapped about 7 of them in and out (this was well into the flash-drive era, mind you), and yet I never saw her work on more than one document. You had to be nice to this lady, because when things didn't work, she would break down and cry. Imagine seeing flannel-clad, bemulleted trailer trash cry, and you have an idea of what we were dealing with here. Kinda felt sorry for her, until the 30th time, at which point I had been dealing with her all 7 years of my tenure there and had pretty much entered Gregory House mode. "Yes, I'm sure it did eat your cover letter. Let me just go get the ipecac from the tape safe."

We had the obsessed. I mean obsessed. I dealt with that one both on and off the job as a personal consultant. That individual is one of...three...reasons I don't do personal tech support anymore (alongside a cheat and a guy who expected me not only to give him free lifetime support after the first call, but would literally speak gibberish to me and expect me to fix the problem). I honestly don't want to say much more about this one, partly because I'm afraid she'll kill me in my sleep or something. For serious.

We had the paranoid. This one was actually a friend of the family. My grandmother worked at the same library, and this was her friend's daughter. Suburbs of Chicago and it feels like fucking Alabama. Still. Apparently she went through a divorce and is now mortally terrified of her ex. To the point where anytime something happened that she didn't understand, she cried "identity theft" and threatened to call the police, her lawyer, the national guard... My mother knew this psycho as a kid and when I told her about this lady the first time I had to deal with her, my mum was in tears, rolling on the floor, unable to speak she was laughing so hard. Apparently some people never change and this was no exception.

And we had the just-plain-weird. Take a Zen Buddhist, a Hindu, a hippie, a practitioner of yoga, and a martial artist, roll all their philosophies into one, dress it in a grungy sweatsuit and deny it showers but once a week, and you have an idea of this guy. He once tried to realign the aura of one of our PCs by taping a comb (as in hair) to the monitor while he worked on it. No shit.

As for abusive customers (or patrons, in this case), there were plenty of those too. Mostly schoolteachers from the nearby high schools and primary schools. They thought they were owed something because schools and libraries go together but doncha know, schoolteachers are more important people so we have to be at their beckon call and do what they want because THINK OF THE CHILDREN. And of course I was just some lowly IT muppet, beneath their mention. I loooooooooooved oh-so-sweetly telling them "I'm sorry, that's against policy, you're not allowed to do that." 'Specially the summer right after I graduated, when the look on their faces of "don't I know you? Shouldn't --I-- be telling --you--what to do?" was fresh and delicious. Hey, I'm nothing if not spiteful. What was really funny, though, was seeing the self-inflated sense of importance of the schoolteachers meet the self-inflated sense of importance of the reference librarians. You know that physicists' paradox about an irresistible force meeting an immovable object? Yeah.

Nothing against schoolteachers or librarians on their own, but in the library environment, shit got vicious.

My favourite, though, was during the big fiasco over internet filtering a few years back. We had a toad patron who was very much of the opinion that the Internet should be censored. Some shit about kids losing their innocence (tell that to the pre-pubescent assholes who set the library's dumpster on fire the last summer I was there...yeah, that was a fun statement to give to the police). Calls me up while I'm managing large amounts of entropy in the computer lab and has me on the phone for half a fucking hour, drilling me about our filtering policy.

Oh, right, we didn't have a filtering policy.

Right, lady, that's great that you feel so strongly about keeping people stupid. In the meantime, let me do my fucking job, I'm not upper management and I have to go put in Reader Rabbit Freebases Shrooms for this whiny six-year-old.

So I'm trying to hand out CD-ROMs, sign people up for computers, and generally keep shit together and I'm hearing from the granddaughter of Rudolf Hess here about how it's somehow my fault that children in our community are being exposed to immoral filth on the internet. And she did this to everyone she dealt with: take the moral culpability, if you should choose to call it that, of the entire library and assign it to the individual she's talking to. Because I can help it somehow. Whatever.

I'm really glad to not be working there anymore. For the last 2 months or so I was pretty much in full-on House mode and all but dropped the courtesy bit once people started jerking my chain. Fuck 'em, I should've put on the asshole shoes ages prior.

As for my current job...wow. I'm truly hard-pressed to think of one time when a user hasn't been at least respectful of me as a human being and appreciative of what I can do for them. Amazing how different it is when real money is moving around. And my boss at the library always extolled the virtues of libraries as "low-pressure" environments. Bull bollocks, my blood pressure dropped through the floor when I switched to my current company.

FELIPE NO

Worked at Geek Squad "Mission Control" for well over a year. I'm in Canada, but we take care of the clients in the United States. The job was very quite broad in terms of what we had to do on a daily basis. Sometimes people just wanted to change their appointments, cancel them or get information about Geek Squad services.

Though, my job was classified as a sales position. It's really quite devious what we had to do. People would call up expecting for free assistance - and here's where the swindling begins. Old people were always amazing targets to make sales, as well as desperate college students that don't understand what backing up your thesis means. These prices are American dollars, but a simple virus cleaning was $249, and it didn't stop there. The more separate services or items we sell to people, the more bonuses I'd receive. So along with that, we'd send them a copy of Norton Antivirus along with a service fee of $29 to install it.

The amount of useless services that we sell to people was astounding and they usually don't know any better. You can tell me that client's ignorance is their own fault, but not when our policies are extremely flimsy. The services just did not work. Countless calls were basically recalls of old services in which issues on the computer kicked up again. Pretty soon, the client's warranty has worn out and they have to pay an entire new service fee to send an agent back out to the home. I've seen client's paying thousands of dollars on a single computer that is well over 5 years old. You can imagine the extreme bullshit that I'd receive on a daily basis.

I've been threatened with violence, my family was threatened, and they even went as far as threatening to kill the entire company itself. People go into a berserker rage when they deal with Geek Squad, and I likely would too. Geek Squad steals money and does half-assed service with technicians that are hired for their sales skills, rather than their IT know-how.

There was also a call that I received in which the client had a Geek Squad agent out to the home to set up the computer. Wires got crossed in the wrong direction, something got fucked up - the entire house apparently went up in flames. Of course, I had to send them off to an extremely higher level to deal with the possible lawsuit, but I heard every word in the book yelled at me, and even a few ones she apparently made up on the spot.

And yet, I feel sympathy for the people that yell and scream. Because I know that behind the desk in my workplace was immature high schoolers and supervisors that were sometimes younger than we were.

This turned into more of a rant/story - but just stay the fuck away from Geek Squad. Best Buy is okay to buy shit from, just don't get sucked into any of their extended warranty bullshit either.

Geek Squad is probably the epitome of a company fucking over their customers on purpose.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Wow Blades, that's a crazy story there. Course, I learned not to deal with Best Buy technicians before they even started advertising the Geek Squad thing. I had an issue with a DVD rom on my old computer where whenever I put anything in it, I got the blue screen of death. I tried asking them over the phone if it was a problem they'd be able to do something about, but they wouldn't even let me say what was wrong. They insisted I bring it in and pay them to look at it... without telling them what was wrong... yeah... screw that.

Jam it back in, in the dark.