Okay, so I come off as kind of a jerkface in today’s post. But there are WAY bigger jerks out there! Like, for starters, everyone on this list of Archetypal “Friends” That Life’s Too Short For!
NTKOG #144: The kind of abusive jerkface who doesn’t just shoot the messenger, but rips his intestines out through his nose, bronzes them, then mounts ‘em on a plaque labeled “My Happiest Day”!
I am: way too familiar with customer service jobs in which evil dragon customers get their kicks from screaming your ears off about the inane corporate policies you’ll be fired if you don’t enforce.
I am not: one whose rocks are gotten off from making some fresh-faced young thing spend her lunch break sniffling into a stress-pint of rum raisin.
The Scene: The tenth bonus level of hell that is Wells Fargo customer service, four days before I left for Barcelona. When I went to Trader Joe’s to pick up a snack, my card was declined on a $1.39 purchase — guys, I may be broke, but I’m not that broke. In a panic, I called up Wells Fargo and was put on hold for twenty minutes before a skittish customer care rep informed me that my card had been canceled for an account upgrade.
“Didn’t your new one come in the mail?” she asked me, bored. Uh, no. “Well, we can get you a new one in 5-7 business days.”
“Yeah, but you guys have known for months that in four days I’m leaving the country. I have no way to access my money. I don’t HAVE 5-7 days!”
“Five to seven business days.”
The care rep sounded cute, granted, but she was a metaphorical brick wall; I ended the call with her so I could punch a literal one. Once I’d considered my options, called Wells Fargo back and spent ten minutes warring their automated system. Got another girl on the line, exchanged my situation, and just as she started to respond — click. Their system disconnected me. Another call, another war, and as the new girl apologized for the system losing me before — click. On the next call, the girl not only fully apologized, but got so far as confirming that my card could not be reactivated before — click.
By the time I got through to the last girl, I was shaking and — we’re friends here, right? — maybe crying a little bit. “The last four people have gotten disconnected!” I told the new girl immediately. “You need to stay on the line. I’m going to give you my number so you can call me back if we get disconnected.”
“Uhhhh, yeah,” she sniffed. “I can’t do that for you. I can promise I won’t get disconnected, though.” Her condescension was swirled thick and it ate through me a little bit.
You know how when you get drunk, there’s a moment at the beginning when your night forks out before you — you can choose whether you’ll grow rambunctious or introverted or maudlin, and once you make that decision, the evening veers out of your control in whatever direction it so pleased you to choose? It could have gone either direction, this conversation. I had the option to be normal TKOG, kill ‘em with kindness and hope that my cloying sweetness inspired the girl to reach beyond her authority and move the world to help me. This is what I usually do and this is the right thing to do.
But this isn’t what I chose. I chose to be angry.
There’s no true need to get into the details here, but let it suffice to say that the conversation began with me reasonably but snippily demanding a step-by-step account of how exactly I got screwed over, and, at the peak of a 40-minute crescendo, ended with me shouting: “You’re lucky you guys locked up all of my money or I’d be sending Bank of America a fucking fruit basket right now!” And finally it was my turn to click.
The Verdict: She was being genuinely sassy with me, true, but why recourse to tear-stained yelling? What’s the point of that? If she couldn’t help me, she couldn’t help me; if she could, she certainly wouldn’t after the way I talked to her.
Worse, for hours — days — weeks now, I’ve felt like a terrible human being. Every time someone yells in my face for no reason at work, I start to get self-righteous, then remember that once I chose to be that person. It’s horrible, guys. It crumples up my chest like a cellophane bag to even remember it.
I think the worst of it is that my tantrum didn’t come out of nowhere. Underneath my sunshine and affable oafishness, I know that there is an angry thing inside of me. It rages small but immortal, and when it is hidden, I have a twisted fondness for it — my secret little monster! – but sometimes I feed it out of control and proudly watch it devour worlds. We are bound together forever, I think, and all I can do is remember how devastating it is after the momentary satisfaction.
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I am one of the nicest people. I hate conflict with a passion. But in that situation, I’m pretty sure I woulda gone the angry yelling route as well.
I am very nice on a daily basis. And that is because I save up all my rage to unleash upon incompetent customer service reps. I find that it a healthy, and normal way to maintain an emotionally balanced lifestyle. You are following in my footsteps!
Don’t overthink it, it’s gone.
And it’s sad to say, but probably that girl is used to even worse customer calls.
Just yesterday I yelled at both my parents… in one night… crying instead of pointing out my opinions because I already knew it would have hurted them either way…
I think that all “nice and polite” girls have inside a secret little monster, though we have to unleash it sometimes, for a little while, or we will be eaten by it… so no harm done if it yells randomly once in a while!
Cheers ;)
I’ve been there. Only about 3 times in my life… and once it was actually at a co-worker, but I’ve definitely been there. I’ve gotten close a few more times, but have somehow managed to hold back my inner-dragon.
I get this little tickle in the back of my neck and it’s either shut up, or it’s all coming out. I don’t blame you even. I have had some HORRIBLE experiences with banks and their customer service. This post made me irritated at my bank just reading it!
I’ve been there (and by “there” I mean pretty much the exact same situation. My card was declined at SUBWAY for god’s sake) and I’ve definitely gone the angry route. Like you, I think, I am generally nice (I think!) and I always try to BE nice. But there’s something about letting it out/letting someone (who might deserve it anyway or so I tell myself) have it when things when things get really screwed up that, well, I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever.
Even if you feel horrible afterward.
I just had a similar situation with Citibank’s Loan customer service. They made a mistake, then lied about it. I had just gotten back from a great vacation and was none too pleased about the swift boot back to reality I received. Sigh. I vote angry is always appropriate when people AREN’T actually helpful.
I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, I think I would have gone completely mental by that point as well. My version of hell would absolutely involve customer service phone-calls while standing at a DMV counter.
ugh
I used to work in an International helpdesk, getting calls from all over, in at least 3 diferent languages. We were NEVER allowed to get snarky or rude with the customers no matter what. If the caller was rude or abusive, we would politely pass the call over to our managar and SHE would handle it. And you know what? It’s not that hard to be helpful no matter what, so I admit I can get very angry with helpdesk reps if they get stupid, because it’s their job to listen, help and solve where posible. Yes, it’s long hours and low pay, but what about when they have to make that kind of call and get somebody rude? Bet they don’t like it. So don’t feel guilty, she shouldn’t have talked to you that way.
I wouldn’t beat yoruself up about it. We all have days where we unleash the little beastie inside us. Better to let the little guy (or gal) out every now and again as opposed to bottling it up and going bat shit crazy on someone.
there’s a difference between going off on someone unprovoked, and letting them have it when you ARE provoked. you were very clearly provoked. when she dismissed the 4 previous hang-ups – which OH MY GOD i know from personal experience is RAGE-INDUCING – i think that gave you a nice legitimate opening for some smackdown.
Provoking TKOG: bad idea. Trust me on this one, guys.
haha, have you ever seen me HULK OUT? Judging by the comment, I’m guessing you have…
[geek] That would be She-Hulk out in your case! ;0 [/end]
ABSOLUTELY NOT! I fucking hate gendered nouns in English. There is literally no excuse except a desire to rewrite language in a way that isolates women! There is just no way I can express how much I hate it.
Poetess? Comedienne? Songstress? Fuck you, everyone who does that!
I realize that “Hulk” may seem different because it’s based on a male character in a comic book universe, but look, if we’re appropriating it to the point that we can use it on anyone other than Bruce Banner, then it better be used on them equally.
(Also, in general, I tend to refer to myself in dudely cases pretty frequently. Like I would never call myself “this chick” — clearly it’s always going to be “this dude” or “this guy”. And when I fantasize about living a life of abiding tragedy, I’m always F. Scott and never Zelda. Anyone who has a problem with my doing this isn’t invited to my tea party.)
Fair enough, except that we were specifically talking about 2 proper names, rather than job or skill titles.
Oh, totally didn’t know She-Hulk was a thing. I’m totally more Hulk-like, though!
A couple of years ago, some arsehole hacked into my paypal account and made it look like i owed a grand. I didn’t realise until I got a letter from a debt collection agency. I phoned paypal and, to my embarrassment, started crying on the phone. I was so embarrassed. I was assured it was sorted, that they knew that I’d been hacked upon investigation. Then I got ANOTHER letter from the debt collection agency and I freaked – I phoned and started yelling but within a minute or two I was too embarrassed to continue yelling and stopped. I wish I’d kept going – sometimes I think since I’ve had so many assholes on the phone abusing me, I should give back what I’ve gotten.
Sounds like the girl was being an asshat and to be perfectly honest, she could have used a bit of a wake up call. So try not to feel too bad about it. :)
Oh my gosh, you poor thing! If I’d been you, I would have been crying so hard I would have made someone else make the call! Jeez!
sometimes you just can’t keep getting taken advantage of. it’s okay, I think
This happened to me earlier this month with Citizens! My phone had gotten shut off because I hadn’t paid it yet, and my cards were all suspended because they were “sending me new cards” so I couldn’t call the bank to yell at them without paying the bill, and I couldn’t pay the bill without speaking to the bank.
I cried a little, for a minute, before deciding that crying over something like that was stupid. Then I started punching things.
I’ve got a few posts like this buried among my archives, if you’re feeling inclined.
Also, I have noticed that when you act like a total bitch in customer service, at some point who ever is “helping” you just wants you to shut up, so they will comply. As long as you try to kill the with kindness, first, that is.
Last year. Tmobile. Almost free phone. It did, however, take me about three hours of freaking out in-store (in my defense, I had just been robbed (if you want the deets, email me, I don’t feel comfortable writing about it on the internet) and the robbers had taken my phone so I didn’t call the police)
So, usually, I’m nice. Generally friendly, especially to people working, etc. But when it comes to my money?! I AM A RAGING ASSHOLE. Okay, that and the internet, my cell phone working, etc. I would have gone INSANE.
Don’t feel too badly about it, it’s happened to everyone. Those people take hundreds of calls a day, and in order to do their job well they have to emotionally disconnect from you – if they went out of their way to help every person with an unusual problem they would go crazy even faster than they already are – add to that the fact that you were quite justifiably stressed about leaving for europe with no money in fewer than five business days, and the fact that with the automated systems that the company itself designed the system to be exactly the way it is (convenient for them and not for you) you could arguably say that it isn’t even your fault… it’s the system’s fault. the system make you!
holy run on sentence, batman!
p.s. hope you got your moolah situation sorted out in the end.
I’m ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS nice to customer service people and waiters…but not to university staff. The people who are nice and do their jobs? Of course I’m nice to them! But the condescending and unhelpful assholes I have to deal with on occasion? There is a trick to it: as soon as you encounter that attitude, throw it back at them. Be subtle at first. Ramp it up if necessary. In most cases, they will back down very quickly. Case in point–the jerk at the registrar’s office I ran into today…he was VERY nice and helpful by the END of our conversation…
Go to a local bank! Great customer service, you may actually know the person you talk to on the phone, and generally much more flexible with fees. Chances are THEY would have called YOU when your card had to be cancelled. I’m biased, I work for a community bank, but we get people all the time who switch and love the change. The only drawback is if you need to be able to deposit when you are out of your area, but you can keep a national bank account for certain stuff if necessary. A mid-sized local bank will likely have all the same products and services available as national ones, so check around.
Dear, one cannot be a true artist unless one is angry. If one wants a more tranquil existence one should become a customer service representative
with a steady income, a set of rules, and the power to disconnect the customer. Your choice: choose wisely.
I think we’ve all had an experience like that at some time. Mine was with a wine merchant, where their staff refused point-blank to go and check their day books after they’d creditted my cheque to the wrong account. To get that sorted out I had to send them a photocopy of the cancelled cheque. Still, I did get $45 of free wine as an apology.
Now guess why I want to keep my cheque book!
Interesting… I usually go for petulant and stubborn, and I swear, it always works. If not, I pull the lawyer card. And that REALLY always works.