Rants from a Call Center Customer Service Rep

Abusive Customers

Every customer service position has the complaint of abusive customers. I can tell you about the time I was waiting tables at sixteen and nearly lost my job for smacking a customer’s hand away when he tried – for the fourth time – to flip up my required pleated skirt as I walked by. Or the time I was spit on at Wal-Mart because food stamps didn’t cover a lollipop from the Valentine’s display. (You really don’t want to get me started on the food stamps subject, but I may have brought that one on myself a teensy bit when I pointed out that candy is not only not a food item, but also not necessary to survival). Or how about the time I was cussed out by an Air Force pilot (who really should have shown better leadership skills) when his daughter got washable paint on the hem of her shirt.

Those are all rather isolated incidents and more on the extreme side than the norm. Why is that? Because unless you’re a total jackwad like the above customers, it’s hard to scream at a person who not only can see your face, but is likely to see you again. Call center CSRs do not have that level of protection from abuse. Despite knowing the person one is cussing out has access to one’s address, phone number, and other related account information, there is a certain level of security in talking to a faceless stranger on the phone, especially when one knows they are unlikely to ever speak to that person again.

It is a general rule in most companies that CSRs are not able to discuss political or religious views with customers. I have been “blessed” many times at the end of a call for one reason or another and usually respond with “Thank you” or “you as well.” This is acceptable to both me and the company because I’ve turned the phrase into a social nicety without divulging my own views; which, in terms of religion, are more spiritual than religious. I have, however, been placed in the position of having to listen to one or more religious or political rants and even had one customer attempt to “save” me over the phone.

One particular “religious” call I received spun me up so bad I had to take my break early and walk laps around the building to calm down. This call started rather routinely. The caller asked if we had any packages that included only locals and religious channels. I informed the customer we had one that did, but it also included family-style channels like the kids channels and Home and Garden type channels. The call should have ended shortly after that with the customer first either accepting or declining the offered package.

My luck is not that good.

I should have seen it coming, he lead with, “I don’t know, maybe one of these guys is your boyfriend or something,” and finished with a twenty-minute rant filled with the most hateful things I have ever heard someone say about another human being. I sat there, stunned, while he went on and on about how we were brainwashing his son by making him think it was okay for blacks and whites to hang out together.

My first thought, “Why say all this if you think ‘one of them’ might be my boyfriend?” My second thought, “Did I just fuckin’ time-warp?”  I should have known better than to think racism was eradicated from our society, I lived in the south for a while (another time-warp moment when I was called a nigger lover for being pleasant to my neighbor) and I once worked around different gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood and Aryan Knights. And I suppose the psychology major in me knew that people like this man were mostly raised, not created, and it really shouldn’t have surprised me when he talked about how the rest of society was brainwashing his son.

But it did.

I bit my tongue and listened while he spewed all manner of hate my direction – not directly at me, but at a group he had no way of knowing I wasn’t a part of. I listened to him whine about how even VH1 was being taken over by Soul Train, and how the Disney Channel was teaching his son the wrong values by allowing white and black children to play together. He finished this rant by stating that he wasn’t raciest or being hateful, it was just his religion – he was a good Christian.