Stories from Customer Service Hell

Working as an operator for a major wire transfer provider was a memorable if horrible experience. Like cattle the operators had hundreds of stalls and no assigned desk. Find a place, plug in and sit down was the daily routine. And while this was part of the enjoyment of this particular job, the true joy was in interacting with our customers. My favorite was the gentlemen who called in and insisted with unshakable conviction that I should wire ten thousand dollars from a South American bank account to Wells Fargo for him. There was a refusal on my part to do so since this is impossible for more than one boring and detailed reason but generally speaking is simply not done. "YOU THINK YOU HAVE ME FOOLED? YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW IN MY FLESH AND MY BLOOD THAT YOU'RE LYING TO ME?" Umm, yeah - OK. Now we come to the part of the Customer Service experience that I despise the most - realizing that the person you are talking to on the other line is most likely a) recently escaped from the nuthouse and b) could be calling from anywhere, including down the street from you. Yeah.

I worked as a Rep for a company that managed HOA's. For those of you who don't know or care what they are but are for some inexplicable reason still reading right now, and HOA is a Home Owner's Association. They have little rules, called "covenants" and all of the people living in the particular area pay fees to have those little rules enforced. Managing an HOA is I imagine something like being God. There are so many bad things going on all at once that it's hard to know where to start. I suppose my single favorite experience here was writing violation letters. Again to clarify, violation letters are nastygrams that you can thank your neighbor for if your dog shit on their lawn or if your Christmas lights were out past January 15th. I had to find a diplomatic way to ask a woman to please stop having such loud sex in her condo and subsequently stop smoking cigars on the balcony after the event. If only I had saved that letter.


More to come, if I can think of them.