Prank callers

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

As if giving tech support working the graveyard shift wasn't mind-numbing enough, we get the odd call from either someone who sounds like been hitting the bottle, crack-pipe or bong pretty hard, and make little to no sense with any following requests. As both amusing and frustrating as this can be, it does free the mind somewhat from late-night chores.

However, lately we've been getting a spate of prank calls, mostly asking for our ISP's mascot (yup, like he'd be floating around and awake at 4 in the morning), or making other outrageous demands, and most of them sound rather young. One litle tyke demanded of me one night that we refund him some money from his mother's credit card.

Now, while customer etiquette usually dictates we treat them politely, I tend either to play along (if bored) or to lose patience (if busy). Responses usually tend to differ depending on the operator receiving these prank calls: I tend to be rather harsh (as is my reputation, apparently *blink*) and bluntly tell them "I think you've got the wrong number" with a edge in my voice, and they get the idea rather quickly. Others are too polite, but still like to play along with the game until we either ask for their parents, or wait until they've hung up, wait a few minutes, and call them back (gotta love caller ID); with some luck we get their parents and tersely inform them of their child's actions (responses range from "My children would never do that!" to "Oh I see......" *knife sharpens in background*), otherwise the question from the answering kid is almost always a panicked, "How did you get this number?!?"

The prank caller, depending on their humour, attitude and language, can either be a welcome distraction, an amusing segue, or a royal pain in the arse, depending on your current state of mind. It's a pity more of the day-timers don't get them.

Comments

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

On the weekends...I work in a mortuary...located in a cemetery...you think you get prank calls!

In my case though...usually a little..."you realize you are being recorded, right?" gets them to hang right up!

:)

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of being a kid and calling Hooked on Phonics at 1-800-ABCDEFG just to say "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!"

I remember once I was probably 10 and did it from a Payphone and they told me they "had my number and it's xxx-xxx-xxxx" "That's so cool! That's the number printed on the payphone alright!" I think I annoyed him. ;-)

[chaobell]

Oh, what I wouldn't give for a good crank caller again.

We had some great ones when I first came to work here.

I had a mock-Chinese caller once. Now, I don't speak Chinese, but I know what real spoken Chinese sounds like. I also know what a white dude pretending to speak Chinese sounds like. This was a white dude pretending to speak Chinese. No, it wasn't Vietnamese either, we have a large enough Vietnamese population that I also know what real spoken Vietnamese sounds like, and this wasn't it.

Me: Good afternoon, computer repair, this is Sarah--
It: Chingchongdingdaodingdangdong?
Me (thinking it's either my ex or my stepmom fucking with me, because we did do this sometimes): Heh heh. Yeah. Hi.
It: Dingdangdingchingdongdaodongding? Chingchangdingdongding--
Me: ...uh...
It: ...dingdaodingdingdongdang--
Me(fighting off hysterical laughter on the off chance that this really is someone speaking some weird moon language and not wanting to be a dick): Uh. I think you have the wrong number.
It: Dingdang?
Me: WRONG NUMBER.
It: ...dingdao. *click*

Also, our office manager once got a real old-fashioned heavy breather at around 10 in the morning. That was the best ever. I seem to remember her glaring at the receiver and yelling "What the HELL is your problem!?" at it.

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

A friend in tech support, however, once advised me that if I got a call that seemed too difficult (and the chances of being monitored were low) that I should use an Indian accent and pretend to be in an off-shore support centre.

Alas, every time I thought of doing this, the calller was Indian.

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

Heh, we actually got away with that here. Thankfully, our techie did happen to be Indian, and after 5 minutes of mixed abuse he'd managed to end the call with the simple phrase, "I am being very sorry, but we are located in Bangalore, and are not being able to do this." Hammed up, naturally, but it worked: idiot hung up in disgust. ;)

[spelunkingplato.livejournal.com]

Perhaps next time you could learn a few genuine Chinese phrases to throw them off...

Or just say in a shocked voice, "You ARE?! Eww, man, you should keep that kind of thing to yourself!" or something along those lines. [I'm ethnically Chinese and can understand the spoken language. When I was younger and kids who didn't know any better used to come up to me and speak gibberish or pull their eyes, I would act like they said something really embarrassing about themselves. Stops them rather quickly when you act serious about it.]

[jecook]

I used to work the UPS Help Desk. Our queue was one that you called if you were having trouble with the shipping software.

One would think that I would have gotten more then the two or three people where were wanting to track a package. The fun part is, I was instructed to do so, adn then to give them the normal number to track stuff.

Fortunatly, I didnt get very many idiots, lthough I did get two people that had nuked their Maxiship system (certain _large_ customers got a computer with shipping software called Maxiship on it. They tended to ship things like a semi-trailer load at a time) trying to format disks so that they could back up their system. Too funny.

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

Never really gotten a prank from anyone other than a coworker, but we do have 2 or 3 schizophrenics that call in from time to time. Most of them are quite polite, but don't make any sense at all...

[dysan27.livejournal.com]

[back reading as I am bored]

"How did you get this number?!?"

Resposnd: "Didn't you know? *drop voice* We know everything"