Random Telemarketers Describe Biggest Freakouts They've Experienced On Job (19 items)

• (#11) Quittin' Time

  From Redditor /u/Blargmode:

  Boss insisted that we'd call people on a Friday from 17:00 to 22:00 [5:00 pm 10 10:00 pm] to do a 30-minute-long market survey. We argued that we'd only be yelled at for calling in the middle of dinner.
  And sure enough, we spent five awful hours being yelled at by angry people.

  After, when the shift was over, our boss was angry with how few answers we had managed to get and was giving us sh*t for it. That's when I quit.
• (#8) Elocution Lessons

  From Redditor /u/TheRecklessOne:

  Worked in customer services for a bank.

  Me: Can I take your account number and sort code please?

  Customer: My star card? What's that?

  Me: No no, sort code.

  Customer: I don't have a star card.

  Me: Not star card, SORT CODE.

  Customer: I JUST TOLD YOU I DON'T HAVE A STAR CARD.

  Me: SOOORRRRRT COOOOODE. 

  Customer: Star code?

  Me: SORT CODE!

  Customer: I really don't understand what you're asking me for.

  Me: S-O-R-T C-O-D-E

  Customer: Sort code! Well, I think SOMEONE needs elocution lessons!

  I'm pretty sure SOMEONE needed a hearing aid.
• (#15) No Love For Floridians

  From Redditor /u/Eggmcmuffington:

  I've worked for call centers for the past few years. I'm working for a Canadian telecom giant right now as a retention agent, but a few years back I worked for a cable provider in their Tampa queue. I did billing, technical support, and sales... pretty much everything. Tech support was the worst.

  Let me tell you, Floridians must be the most entitled and nasty bunch of people in the continental United States. If they were too dumb to figure something out, it was of course due to my incompetence.

  Anyways, this older man called me up, started a relentless tirade of the incompetence of the company I worked for, finally ending in a string of insults of my intelligence and my inability to fix his issue. By this point, I hadn't spoken a word other than a greeting and my name.

  When they would have these outbursts, my trick was always to stay silent. Not put myself on mute, but stay completely silent so they knew I was there, but that I was not speaking to them. Once they were done, I'd drag that silence out for as long as I could before the inevitable, "Are you still there?" At that point I would calmly continue as if it had never happened - I refuse to validate the adult temper tantrum with a response.

  Anyways, after explaining his issue and insulting me more, I was audibly laughing on the phone, upsetting him more. Apparently our system was so bad because his TV kept saying, "DVD VIDEO INSERT DISK."

  I attempted to explain to him multiple times that this was not due to our system, but the fact that his TV was set to receive the input from his DVD player as opposed to his cable receiver, and he continued to berate me and call me stupid.

  We eventually resolved his issue, and at that point he continued to insult me for being stupid. My closing statement was, "Next time, I hope you get somebody too stupid to help you, might make it easier to work with somebody more on your level. Have a great day!"

  Luckily, quality NEVER pulled calls over a few minutes in length, so we could do whatever the hell we wanted.
• (#13) The Worst All-Inclusive Cruises

  From Redditor /u/ThePonzo:

  I worked in a call center for Bertelsmann, some sort of German mass media sh*t that sells crappy travel packages to Egypt or Turkey to seniors, including overpriced flights, hotels, and flight insurances.

  I used the name "Stromberg" (main guy on the German version of The Office) on the phone because one of those elderly c*nts found me in a phone book, and called me on my mobile phone at 9 pm spitting fire in my ear about the cancellation fee for his booked vacation. (He didn't book the travel cancellation insurance.)

  But that wasn't what made me [lose] it, it was those f*cking c*nts from Bertelsmann/Donauland not giving a sh*t where they send those elderly people. One woman called me after her vacation and told me about Egypt locals shooting at the cruise ship with rifles "for fun," and all Bertelsmann did was send the next pack of elderlies straight on the same cruise.

  Not to mention the poor quality on those cruises, tons of reports of elderlies having the sh*ts or getting sick.

  That's one of those flyers, still makes me angry.
• (#10) Death Threats Over A $2,000 Bill

  From Redditor /u/crustyruffles:

  I worked for a health insurance company. It was entry-level stuff. I'd basically take calls all day and go over benefits, answer questions on claims, and help people find doctors for their plan.

  I got a call from a woman around mid-day wanting to know why she got a $2,000 bill for a procedure. I looked everything over and explained to her that it was her deductible, and the insurance company paid the rest of the bill.

  She immediately loses it on me in some kind of combination of crying and screaming. The gist of it basically amounts to how she has insurance, so it should pay for everything. Not uncommon to hear. So I started to explain that her insurance was paying over $9,000 for this service, but she had to pay a bit also.

  Now the hysterics go into overdrive. She's wailing about losing her house because of this. She's going to have to file bankruptcy. And this is all because of kidney stones. I do my best empathy bit and tell her most places will work with her and make payment plans for balances, some even do more for those with lower incomes. I tell her I can get the hospital's billing department on the line for her and see what we can get done for her... which is way beyond what the company would ever want us to do, but I wanted to help.

  Woman finally starts to calm down a bit and asks me, since I work for the insurance company, if I have the same insurance she does. I tell her I do.

  She then tells me she hopes I die before I ever think of using the health insurance. At that point I'm being cussed out like no other, so I hung up on her.

  After the call I sat there for a second to collect my thoughts. I'd been yelled at and called all sorts of names before, but my mind immediately went to my mother. She had just finished radiation and chemo after a double mastectomy. She had over $300,000 in medical bills. She never complained once about them... She was just happy to be here and be better. Never did she pick up the phone and randomly start screaming a death wish at a total stranger that was trying to help her, no matter how upset she was.

  That was enough for me. On top of the usual bullsh*t of a call center (awful management, unrealistic productivity expectations, and a shark tank environment among peers) I was done. By that time I was able to apply for non-phone jobs at the company and I got the f*ck out of there. Almost three years later I've never been back in a call center and am much happier.
• (#4) Just Doing Our Job

  From Redditor /u/newm1070:

  I worked at my [university's] phone center for three years calling alum and parents, asking for donations. I loved it and rocked at it. I raised 50k last year for my school.

  Honestly the rejection doesn't even [faze] me - you are on the phone, you are most likely never going to see them ever in your life, so f*ck 'em, you don't need them. It also creates great small-talk skills and made me a lot more confident because I do not have a fear of rejection anymore. I can go up to guys at bars, hit on 'em, and not worry about being shot down. I now work at a publishing company calling teachers and same thing, but the teachers are a lot nicer. I do have some horror stories, though, from my university phone center.

  I have been called a f*ggot multiple times on the phone when making small talk. You know, you talk about what they were involved in and what you are, I would say I was involved in the school's GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance] club and apparently that did not sit well with some donors.

  To be fair, it is a Catholic school, so I should not have been too surprised. It gave me a tough skin, though, and I really did enjoy it. Some of the girls I worked with though would leave crying... some people are really jerks. Lesson of the story, don't forget that you are actually talking to a person on the other side of the phone, and treat them like you would treat someone face to face. We are just doing our job and making calls.

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