One of Those Days

I was explaining to Willow the other day the joys of working with customers. My friend Monty (remember Monty? I haven't spoken of him in a while!) and I used to trade 'customer of the day' stories. These involve the customer(s) who sticks out above all others in stupidity or annoyingness.

A few years ago, we had a meeting here with the whole department and the managers, and even Boss²'s boss. I don't remember much of the meeting, but I do remember Boss³ saying we had to do something special for our customers and asking why. One of my coworkers, who's name was Doug (and I'm using his actual name here for two reasons. One is that he no longer works with us, and two is that Willow and Glen might read it and laugh for an obscure reason that no one else would understand) answered Boss³ by saying "Because customers are stupid!" All the peons laughed and agreed and we've never forgotten it!

This morning, all before 0800, I have confirmed Doug's admonition (not like there was ever a doubt) and ended up with two Customer Of the Day stories. I haven't even been here for an hour!

The first person should not be using a computer. Finding information on our website is apparently a very difficult thing to do, even though other people find the information they needed all the time.

The second person had a problem that was admittedly our mistake. Thankfully, the individual who did it no longer works here (thankyouthankyouthankyou!). This customer had 3 problems; the initial, easily corrected human mistake, the fact that the phone line my department monitors is not done so 24/7, and that they can't understand English. (This is not because it is not their first language, but perhaps because they chose not to read the thorough response I gave them.)See, after I replied that a person made the error and it doesn't happen often but can happen, and that the phone has to have a voice mail for the times when we're not here and provided the 24/7 number that they can use, they replied that they still didn't understand why the mistake was made (you're not perfect, neither are we!!) and that they were upset that they had to leave a message (too bad!! if you called the right number, you wouldn't have had to!). So, I just had to repeat myself in their reply.

Then, before 1000 this morning, I found another stupid customer who has been making multi-hundred dollar payments in less than $2 increments, but all on the same day! So the poor merchants are getting 50+ checks a day from this guy. Make one payment, dude! You've done it before. Of course, we can't tell the customer how to use their bill pay service, but their merchants can refuse to process their checks.

Now, get this. I've been so busy with stuff, I started writing this at 0815 this morning, and it's now near time for me to go that I'm getting to post it! I didn't even get to tell you about the rest of my day!