What's the most tasteless thing you've ever heard $user say?

[vorro.livejournal.com]

I'll start.

I had a customer want a conference bridge set up today, and she requested "a bridge that's more stable than the one in minneapolis."

I'm sure y'all can top that...

Comments

[russianswinga.livejournal.com]

Some people just don't have good judgement as to what's appropriate. If I was told this, I'd give the person a good long stare

[ex-deliveryboy.livejournal.com]

heh, you should have told them that your family was on that bridge or something

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

I hope you made a reference to some imaginary family member or friend that was on the bridge?

[vorro.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, no. The only thing that I could say for about 30 seconds was "wow."

not mine, but a good one

[toxico.livejournal.com]

At a previous job, a coworker had to call a customer's bank with her on the line. When we were put on hold, she would say things like, "Oh, look at you taking command! I like a man who can take charge!"

At the end of the call when everything was resolved and the bank was off the line, she said, "You know, you really impressed me; I'm so wet right now and I want you to come fuck this tight pussy!"

The call was being recorded.



At a diferent job, a "customer" bought a web appliance on Ebay and instantly wanted support from us. It's important to note that the device she bought probably didn't work when she bought it. After several attempts of drilling it into her head that she needed a support contract, she finally obtained one.

This woman became infamous in our department. She had spoken to each of us, and her state of sobriety was different every time. Legal had revoked her support contract and given it back twice when she apologized for verbally abusing the employees. It was finally permanently revoked.

During this whole fiasco, she would say things to us like (this was actually one of them), "What do we have to do to get this thing working, have a baby?! Well, let's fuck!" Somehow she got one person's direct number and would leave him voice mail to the tune of (and this is pretty much verbatim from one message), "xxxxx, You're a chicken-shit mother fucker. I should have known you wouldn't answer the goddamn phone, you African-sounding piece of shit [he's Jamaican]..." and so on.

Re: not mine, but a good one

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

.....

*speechless*

[twistedsyx.livejournal.com]

Tasteless things.
me: thank you for calling $placeofbusiness my name is $namelessgrunt
him: Oh thank god a man, you know I was talking to some woman their about 5 minutes ago and she had no idea what she was talking about. That bitch said that $solution would fix my $problem.
me: well $solution is the correct solution to $problem
him: *Pause* Well I've worked with computers for 25 years (I stopped listening) and when a woman is right (more not listening) let me speak to your manager
me: (lying) actually you did speak to my manager, it's just been a busy day.
him: *swear words and hang ups*

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

The tech says, "I'll schedule some time to work on that."
The customer says, "Why don't you schedule more time and fix it."

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

That's actually fucking brilliant. Give that man a cookie.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Monty Python: "There's nothing wrong with you that an expensive operation won't prolong."

(the problem, you may recall, was the presense of hippy squatters in the man's abdomen.)

[yndy.livejournal.com]

by and far the worst? "a woman? damn... well, you're not black are you? the only thing worse than getting a woman for tech support would be getting an [n-word] woman..."

I actually just hung up on the bastard. I figured they could fire me if they wanted to but my boss seemed to think I had handled it 100% correctly... surprisingly, he didn't call right back and yell at anyone... which is just weird.

[ladynisa.livejournal.com]

I got a customer on the line once who started the conversation off with "ladynisa?! That's a woman's name! And I don't talk to women, get me to your supervisor RIGHT NOW!" Instinct forced me to respond with "You don't speak with women?! WOW, it must be REALLY hard for you to get a sandwich made, isn't it?" Needless to say I refused to transfer him to anyone unless he gave me the account info, which he in turn refused to give me. I forced him to hang up on me. The great part about it is my sup is a guy, and was laughing his ass off! He called back 9 times, and got every single woman on our team (small team, maybe 20 people). We finally decided to cave and give him a supervisor. However, my direct supervisor (the guy) decided that he should be best handled by the team manager (it IS what he asked for)... who's a woman! She was even kind enough to call him back after he hung up on her and left him a voicemail jsut to make sure that everything was ok. :D

[argonel.livejournal.com]

While that is very tasteless, I would be very impressed with a piece of tech hardware that functioned with almost no downtimae and maintenece for 40 years, especially one exposed to the weather and regularly overloaded.

The truely amazing part about the bridge collape is how few people were hurt.

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

Repeatedly after the first few seconds of the call I've been told "Thank God I got an American and not some towelhead." God bless Amurrika, you piece of dickcheese.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've had that many times as well. THe best is when they don't say "towelhead" or even say something as nice as "Indian"... they just put on an accent *just* so that we're absolutely sure who they mean.

[photosinensis.livejournal.com]

I usually get that one earlier in the day. The interesting part is that I work chat support, and thus I find that the Indians have better English than the Americans.

Of course, by midnight, I'm actually talking to the Indians, and I thank god that they're usually more intelligent than the Americans.

[echan.livejournal.com]

My last job was doing outsourced tech support -- American call center and American companies. Not a month went by without at least one customer commenting on how refreshing it was to get real support directly from the company, not some outsourced shithole. Here's a hint, people -- lack of accent != not outsourced.

[dkphoenix.livejournal.com]

I worked in one (outsourced) department that had a startling array of accents. Depending on who the callers got they might hear lightly Southern, heavy Southern Rhett Butler-esque, Noo Joizey, stereotypical SoCal surfer, New Orleans Cajun, Pacific Northwest, or Russian. You could just smell the repeat caller brains overheating trying to figure out exactly where they were talking to.

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

We had a superb Tier 2 who had moved to the States from Pakistan for school. People used to give him shit all the time, ask for someone "in America", or ask to be transfered to "someone who can speak English"...dude sat 2 rows over from me and his spoken English was perfect.

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

I'm English and once spoke to a woman with a laughably stereotypical Texan drawl. She couldn't understand me when I said "Start button" (I don't speak with a thick regional accent either, I'm very BBC newsreader) and after the third time repeating what I'd said ("Tha STAHP buh-tun? The WHUT???") she demanded to speak with someone who "spoke American".

Needless to say I hammed up the accent even more and told her that there was nobody else available and tortured the pompous, redneck bitch as long as I could.

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

I get that all the time doing overflow support from our American office late at night from our ISP based in London. Southern staters would call in with a thick, near-incomprehensible drawl and - combined with a pretty shitty line quality - had to ask quite often for them to repeat themselves. Patience wasn't their strong suit: it was 3am over there at midday in London at the time.

Eventually they cracked and shouted, "Is therr an'one there thay-at speeks 'Merican?"

Having used up my quota of patience for the call simply attempting to comprehend what this arrogant fuck was trying to say, I stepped up the crisp English Received Pronunciation accent (which is getting pretty damn good now) and queried innocently, "You mean English? You have called after-hours support, and are talking with the London helpdesk, we're actually all capable of speaking English here in England."

(By this time, my shift manager had stopped playing Sudoku during his lunch break and began to lean over, invoking the boss's right to eavesdrop: I hit the speaker button to accommodate.)

"Yurr site say-az twenny-fore hour suppurt! Why'n th'hell can't I git suppurt in my own day-am lang-wage?"

"The $ISP-UScompanyname doesn't specify 24hr American support I'm afraid, I understand it's rather late over there and our US offices have closed, is there any way I can help you?"

(By this time the boss is trying not to laugh and spoil my call.)

"Jeez! S'if those Ind-yans aren't bad enuff, I gots-ta git m'self a day-amed limey!"

About here is where I reverted to my original accent, abandoning the cultured twang and returning to the bluntness that is my country's lingustic characteristic. It had the effect of a brick wall falling on them.

"Actually, I'm Australian. Now can I help you?"

*click*

Heh.

[dadelus.livejournal.com]

It's odd that these days my fellow Americans react so negatively to a British or Australian accent.

I am ashamed to admit that in the early 90's I whored myself out as a telemarketer. The company I worked for pushed magazine subscriptions. Since this was the most mind-numbing job I ever held I had to find someway to amuse myself. To that end I would adopt an absolutely HORRIBLE English accent when talking to people. At first I only did it from time to time but when I noticed my sales going up when I used the accent I started doing it more often.

I finally stopped when one day I got this odd feeling and decided to straighten up and dropped the accent only to have my next call answered by a gentleman with a very nice British accent. I figured I had dodged a bullet so I knocked off the act after that. :)

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

Oh, you should have kept it up. When a Brit answers you can simply drop the accent and explain that you get more sales when you use it. Then you can use the insta-charm to sell to them.

Assuming that you're allowed to deviate from the script.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

When working at an ISP, speaking to Joe Redneck from Arkansas...

"Male or female? Heh, I wonder what the faggots put there..."

[canray.livejournal.com]

Not me, but horror stories from my first Phone Tech Support job, for a New York Cable Company.

"I don't care about any damn towers! I want my stories!"

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahahahhaah holy crap that's funny.

I'm quoting this on IRC.

But yeah, it was pretty tasteless. I tend to be the one who says the socially unacceptable things, so I can't really top that thinking about stuff I've heard from customers.

[wherdafux-d-cat.livejournal.com]

'I know you're not our network support but we're having trouble and our IT guy just would be at his sister's funeral today...' Grrrrrr.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

"I had a customer want a conference bridge set up today, and she requested "a bridge that's more stable than the one in minneapolis."

I'm sure y'all can top that..."

No, I am almost certain that I cannot.

Wow.

[soruk.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry, we are unable to guarantee our conference bridge platform will be up 24/7 for 40 years straight."

[ateji.livejournal.com]

Nope, can't top it. I've got just the regular run of crap.

"ateji was rude to me and [male coworker whom she called back; real dim bulb who laughed when nervous] laughed at me hung up on me [an accident because of his nervousness]! It's because I'm BLACK isn't it?!"

...no. No, ma'am, it's not. It's your attitude.

"Well, twenty years ago, you folks had [XYZ item]. How old are you, anyway? Can I talk to someone old enough to remember this?"

*gritted teeth* My age has no bearing on this discussion, but let's see if I can find you someone [i.e., the bitchiest full-time staff member to ream you out]."