4-16-11 Saturday (Inconvenient Calling)

It was a fairly slow and uneventful day at work today.  Saturday’s seem to have the most time between calls.  I think it’s because at the moment, they over-staff Saturdays.  With approximately 10-15 minutes between calls, the day seems to drag on and on.  Fortunately I’m surrounded by awesome teammates and have some interesting conversations going.

It did seem as though many of my customers were rude.  Not nasty-rude but manner-rude.  They’d hold side conversations as I read scripts or gave them information.  They’d ask questions to things I already explained, had they been listening.  Sometimes I’d get the occasional, “sorry” but they’d keep doing it anyway so the “sorry” hardly matters.  I certainly understand the occasional yelling at the kids or dog, but these people were ridiculous.  I spoke with one person who sounded like they were hanging out in a wind tunnel, one who was on line at a store (I could hear register beeping), another who put me on hold for a real long time to get a pen, and the list goes on. 

I gave my greeting to a gentleman and at the end when I asked how he was I got a one word reply.  “Hungry”.  I said, “excuse me?”  He replied again.  I asked again.  He explained I asked how he was and he answered.  This man sounded like he was 958 pounds, barely had the energy to speak to me, and had gobs of fat blocking necessary voice organs.  It’s what I pictured; I never said I was normal.  It was like I could smell him through the phone too.  I couldn’t wait to get off that call, much like you can’t wait to stop hearing about this guy.  The guy creeped me out.

During yet another call, I explained that I needed to play a recorded disclosure that runs a little over 2 minutes.  The woman never listened and screamed to other people during the recording.  Ummmm, hello, I’m still on the phone too.  When the recording finished, I asked if she had any questions, naturally she had none so I said, “excellent, let’s see if you were paying attention.  I have 5 questions I need to test you with.”  There was silence.  “I’m just kidding.”  She nervously laughed.  Bitch.

People.  Respect please.  Perhaps it wasn’t a good time to call your bank today?  Just sayin’.  I think modern technology has made us rude in some ways.  OK, maybe not us, maybe them.  I didn’t mean to tell so many customer stories, frankly I didn’t realize I had so many for just one shift.  Mind you, these are only my stories.  My coworkers have their own.