Crazy Customer

I was reading this blog by Stephanie's Blog and her issues with seating demanding and horrible people on Mothers Day this year at work. It reminded me of the the funniest story I ever had when I worked at an inbound Call Centre (I worked there for 4 years, so many stories to tell).

It was my first Good Friday shift and we answered phone calls for certain councils across Melbourne. This would allow us to contact rangers or contact council personnel in order to get things done. Different councils had different functions that we could call upon to help the customers that were calling.

Then this guy calls to complain about a roadside vendor that was selling flowers on Good Friday and he was sure that they did not have a permit. I could see from the council log that this guy had called multiple times previously but the way the logs went, it would basically just end up dumped in a pile of "left over" calls at the end of the month. For the council, this was not a priority. I informed the gentleman that I could see he had called and the call had been logged. I told him I could log the call again for him if he wanted me to.

He was very demanding and wanted to know what was being done about it. I tried to explain that it was a public holiday and that the council would not get the call until Monday but once again I was happy to log the call for him. This continued on for about 5-7 minutes which is quite a long phone call given the average council call was about 2 minutes 30seconds.

He continued to say that he called 10 minutes ago and was told someone would call him back. That would NOT be protocol for his call so I did not believe him. Then he said he called 5 minutes ago. So, I aware there was nothing I could do but needing to get this guy off the phone, I said, "What was it Sir, did you call 10 minutes ago or 5 minutes ago?" His response, "What are you calling me a liar?"
"No sir, but first you told me you called 10 minutes ago and now you're saying you called 5 minutes ago so which was it sir"
"You're calling me a liar, I'm going to a suer to sue you!"
"That would be a lawyer sir!"

At which point he hung up and I reported the call the to the Supervisors who sat their in hysterics.