Ok, so I’m a supervisor at work - that means, when I’m doing the supervisor thing, that I have to look out for the people on the floor, take calls that are too long, talk to idiots that think a supervisor’s going to fix their life etc. So I wander over to check on a call that had been going too long, and Lauren’s crying. Ok, so this is different, it takes a fair bit to shake her, so this guy has to be a complete ass. He guy had basically been insulting her, the company, everyone he could think of for ten straight minutes, and being a general pain because he felt like taking his lack of humanity out on someone else.
So, taking the headset off her - since she wasn’t in a state to transfer the call to me - I pick up the line, and attempt to help the customer - his name is Stephen Browne. Nope, no way - Stephen’s in full shithead mode. Mouthing off about the incompetence of all our staff, the lack of customer service, using the word fuck as punctuation, and generally being painful about things. I ask him to stop swearing, and say that it’s a simple procedure that I can complete in a minute, if only he could answer my questions. All I needed was a code off the either the letter that came with the phone, or the back of the phone itself. No sir, that wasn’t possible, but it certainly was possible for him to start mouthing off again about the fact that he couldn’t read the (3mm high) writing on the back of the phone, and that he had already given the code “to the girl from before.” I gave him another warning, then terminated the call.
By this time I’d used the code that the shipping department had put in as the one from the phone he had been sent - generally it’s right, only if there’s something seriously screwed is it wrong, but I always check anyway, since it’s a pain to fix. So his phone was active on the network, I’d hung up on him, and he HAD to call us back to activate it, since all it would say was “contact service provider” if it was turned on, because there was a setting wrong on the handset from the factory (it comes up telling us what it needs to be on, and what it is on out of the box).
He’d already mouthed off to at LEAST two of our staff. He’d previously ranted and made racist comments to another female member of my staff about the Indian prepaid phone activations department that he had somehow gone through to, and then hung up when told to moderate his comments. He’d mouthed off at me, and then been hung up on, his phone wasn’t working now that I had activated the new one, and he was going to have to call back and abuse someone else.
Before I go on, I have to tell you about Adam. Adam’s our resident… I don’t know. He’s an overtly queeny gay, he’s done drama, and is one of those people that has to be the center of attention. If there ever was someone that had a built in red-cordial-and-sugar gland, it would be him. He’s hilarious most of the time, but annoying when you’ve got to get some work done. Adam’s really pissed with work lately, righteously hating it because well, it gets to you after a while, and management’s making some bad decisions that leave us with massive amounts of overworked people.
So Adam’s really looking for someone to mouth off at, and when I saw that he had gotten Stephen, I was waiting for an explosion of mouthing off to a righteous shit of a customer that really deserved it. But no, throughout the call, Stephen was apparrently as nice as pie, and didn’t say much about anything but getting his phone working. He was cooperative, he went through the setting change, and the phone was working in about two minutes. Easy!
Not so. Then it came to the point of the call when our script requires us to say - as Adam did - “so, is there anything else I can help you with?” And out came one of the stupidest statements Stephen could have made. “Yeah, I want compensation for all the calls I’ve made tonight.” Right. So we’re going to give YOU money back because you’re an abusive asshole? Not likely, butthead. Adam repeated this back to him, because I was sitting nearby to listen, just to point out the fact that he was probably going to have to escalate the call, and to point out that the guy was being more of an ass than before.
Eventually it got to the point where Adam was flat out refusing, and Stephen was asking to escalate the call to the supervisor - of course, of the four supervisors on, I was the closest, so I took it. He realised straight away that it was me, and tried to ignore the fact that he was hung up on previously until I made a point of mentioning it as a reason why he wasn’t going to get anything out of us. He thought, because of our apparrent incompetence, and the fact that he hung up on two seperate people in seperate departments, then got hung up on by me, that he was worthy of our goodwill? Sure, why not. Uh - no?
Then he went on to say “well, I demand compensation” - where I replied with the fact that I didn’t care. Asked if I cared about my job, I replied that I did. I was told that I wouldn’t have it any longer, and I replied with a laugh. Told that he woudl post a sign at his work, where he was a supervisor with 500 men working with him, I advised that he could do what he wanted to, it wasn’t going to make us give him anything. Told that he would write a letter demanding compensation and that I would lose my job, I offered the address so he could. Gave him my name and my agent code, and the fact that I am the only supervisor at work called James, and asked if there was anything else I could do? Not interested, Stephen muttered something about my lack of negotiation skills and customer service so I offered the opportunity to speak with my supervisor, so he could attempt to negotiate his way into getting a credit.
Of course, since I was incompetent, he’d love to speak to my supervisor. The next person up the line is a wonderful woman called Jo. People don’t win when they mess with Jo - she’s just… *shrugs* one of those people. She’s not a hardass, just extremely good at her job, knows what she’s talking about, and knows how to deal with every different type of person you could come across. Of course, Stephen wasn’t going to get anything out of her, and it doesn’t take much to listen to someone rant and rave about a completely pointless issue, so she was doing other work at the same time. Some time later, when she pointed out the fact that noone was going to credit him, and that they were getting nowhere and she was going to go, he hung up - and didn’t call back for the rest of the night.
Now, the question is - if he hadn’t ranted to start with, and just done what he had to, would I be typing this now? Or would he have called up once, had his phone activated, been talked through having the setting checked and then gone on his merry way? Some people just don’t get the hint that yelling and being an abusive prat will get you nowhere in life.