CUSTOMER SERVICE, OR DUMB CUSTOMER HORROR STORIES!

[Trevor]

I think if you work with the general public you will encounter loonies regularly

I work with the public daily: 98% of it is easy and clients go away happy but the other 2% 

[ER]

Part of one of my jobs is to deal with and often placate artists, their reps, and gallery owners, and I think crying toddlers and brooding adolescents are easier to handle than needlessly stressed out artists, especially the ones in Germany with whom I am in contact on a regular basis.

One last year frankly told me she needed her check to buy cocaine and was withdrawing and she screamed at me, switching from German to English and threatened me with all sorts of miseries if I didn't get her money to her right then so she could get cocaine.

Never before had I wished so much for the Jedi mind trick: "You don't want to buy cocaine, you want to sit down and re-think your life....and quit screaming at me."

[ER]

I once called 911 about a man who got hit by a car (minor accident) and I calmly and in a clear conversational tone told the operator I'd just seen a car swipe a man in a crosswalk and he was bent over kind of limping, and the 911 operator practically screamed at me:

CALM DOWN! I NEED YOU TO CALM DOWN!

Well I used to work a "sort of" dispatcher job that dealt with much bigger and worse things than a car brushing against someone and I don't see how I could have been speaking much calmer, and if I wasn't I doubt an operator yelling at me would me helped much.