Customer Service

So for those of you who know me, I work in customer service.  For those of you that don't, I still work in customer service, except you may not have known about it until just now.

Or did you??

The answer of course, is no.

So yeah, customer service.  I'm sure we've all had a measure of it at some point, or perhaps it's grown into a full blown epidemic in our lives, be it as a cashier, call center drone, or that guy who punches people's parking passes.  Whether we've done it unto others or had others inflict it unto us, none of us are strangers to the unique dance between customer and customeree... er, employee.

I think if you had to be in this line of business though the best work would be that of police officer.  Think about it.  They have to do customer service (respond to complaints, use a computer) except they get to carry a gun while doing so.  I think a lot of my calls would go differently if I had a firearm on my person, not to mention the reduction in memory fault errors I'd see on my PC.

Like this one customer I had many years ago.  I think a clear, concise message at the beginning of the call to the tune of "Your call will be recorded, and our representitives know where you live and may be wielding deadly weapons.  Thank you." would have seen this interaction go very differently.

I will never forget that call.  I was working for a financial institution at the time. A client called in because we had cashed out an investment of his (at his request) and sent him a check.

He couldn't understand why we sent him a check and was quite upset.  I'm not sure what he was expecting.  Cash maybe?  This isn't the future!  Anyways, I tried helping him with his problem, thinking that perhaps this poor old fella didn't just didn't know how to cash a check.

Finally I had to ask, "Sir, haven't you ever cashed a check before in your life?" to which he responded "Well of course, but the only way to do so is through a bank and into my bank account."

*Awkward Pause*

"And this is a problem... why exactly sir?"

"Because the government will just come right in and take my money from me!"

It was at this point it started to dawn on me that this kindly gentlemen was probably involved in a little thing we in the financial biz call "tax evasion".  I quickly began doing a customopolitical backstroke (that was "customer" and "political" smored together into a gooey new word).

"I'm sorry sir, but as a bank we can do nothing for you, especially when it comes to helping you circumvent payments you may owe to the government."

At this point he became a tad irritated and said something that to this day remains the funniest thing I have ever heard a customer yell at me.

"This is a load [Bleepity bloorpity bloo]*, I hope you get married someday and that your wife kills you!!"

*Click*

Now granted, the threat of death, or the wishing of death upon the source of one's frustration, is nothing new to those of us familiar with the rigors of customer service.

This though was neither.

He wasn't threatening me, nor was he merely wishing me to cease and desist from existing.  He obviously had in mind a very specific way he wanted me to die.

Think about it.

He first wished for me to find the love of my life, marry her, be blissfully happy, and then be murdered by the very one to whom I gave my heart to.  This elderly gent didn't just want me dead.  He wanted me to leave this world in a screaming bloody mess with thoughts of betrayal and bewilderment the last things to go thru my mind (other than a bullet... or knife... or however it was he wanted me to go, he wasn't all that specific about how he wanted my hypothetical wife to end it all for me).

Anywho, the whole thing got me to thinking about all the things I've heard and seen over the years in customer service.  I'll be off compiling a list of my personal experiences with customer service, social life (or what little of it I have left these days) be damned!  In the meantime I'm anxious to hear from you.  Feel free to email me your stories or even leave it in the comments section.  That goes for everyone who reads this, all two of you!

*Some swears may have been deleted for dramatic effect.

Hello Internet!

I came to write my first blog only to find that google had changed the title on me.  Apparently, it thought Science Fiction Fantasy Stan would be a much better title than the one I had picked out.  Now I'm not saying I wouldn't love to know someone called Science Fiction Fantasy Stan, and normally I'm not one to argue with the internet, but in this case I felt I had to take a stan!  I mean stand, STAND!  Even though I'm actually sitting down and have no intention of standing up in the middle of Starbucks.

Not that I wouldn't love to inject a little surrealism into the general lifelessness I see around me.  "I am writing a blog" I would announced loudly as I stood, followed by a stoppage in conversation as people cast an awkward glance or two in my direction.  Of course if I announced something else, say, "I'm getting married", then I may actually get some applause and a few smiles.  And then, just at the height of the adulation, I'd kick over one of the shelves holding a bunch of coffee, do a fist pump, and carry off my bride to be.  At that point everyone would be caught between a rock and an awkward place.  "Is this part of the celebration, do we keep clapping?  Should one of us be doing something right now?"

That was a little random but that's where my mind took me so I had little say in the matter.  I'm a slave to my random impulses, or at least, a slave to writing them down as they enter my head when I'm in actuality trying to make a blog.  Call it my inner Science Fiction Fantasy Stan I suppose.  We all have him, that crazy random dude inside that tells us to do things.  Most of the time we can suppress him and be normal.  Other people can't seem to contain him at all and end up being those people who you move away from on the bus because they seem too busy yelling at their own genitials.  Or the other folks who go through life much like Heath Ledger's Joker did, not looking like a guy with any particular plan.  They just do... things.  Which is kind of how I've been feeling lately.  So aside from arguing with my own body parts or becoming a mass murderer in bad makeup, blogging was the next best thing I could come up with as an outlet for my inner Stan.

And blog I shall!