I’m an ATM service tech. I get a call from a bank manager.
Bank Manager: “So, the ATM has stopped printing money.”
Me: “Ha, well… that’s not how they work.”
Bank Manager: “Yes, I know it’s not working. That’s why I’m calling you! Moron.”
I later confirmed it wasn’t just a slip of the tongue. He really thought the ATM printed the money.
A bank… manager.
I was a repair technician for a cell phone company.
Customer: “My phone has stopped charging!”
Me: “Have you got it wet or left it in the sun?”
Customer: “I’ve never even had it near the water!”
I take it apart, and bingo: corrosion all over. I showed the customer:
Me: “Are you sure you’ve never had it near water?”
Customer: “Never!”
I do what I can, put it back together, power it back on, and am presented with the screen wallpaper, a selfie she took from inside the pool.
Just one of the typical calls I would get when I answered the customer phone:
Caller: “I paid for your services for my friend as a favor. But she didn’t pay me back. Can I have the money back, and you just sue her for the money?”
Me: “…No.”
Caller: “But she was the one who benefited from your services, and she didn’t pay for it. Why should I have to pay for it?”
Me: “I don’t know, you probably should have thought of that before you paid for the services.”
Caller: “Well, you should give me the money back because you didn’t provide your services to me specifically.”
Me: “You paid us to provide your friend with our services, we did exactly what you paid us to do, we are not required to do any more. You aren’t getting the money back. If you had an arrangement with your friend, then that was between you and your friend, and you need to take it up with her.”
Caller: “I thought you guys were supposed to have a reputation for being reasonable with people!”
Me: “Only when our customers make reasonable requests.”
Caller: *Click.*
We fix phone screens.
Caller: “I need you to fix my window screen.”
Me: “Window, as in a window… on a house?”
Caller: “Where else would it be!?’
Me: “We don’t do that.”
Caller: *Getting huffy.* “Why does your ad say you fix screens then?”
Me: “You’re conveniently ignoring the word ‘phone’ in front of screen.”
Caller: “Well, it’s your fault for not making it clearer!”
Me: “Sorry for your comprehension issues. Now, excuse me, ma’am, I need to call an eye-glass repair place for my broken window.”
Caller: *Click.*
A guy comes in with a VCR, a rather unusual unit as it’s for European rather than US TV standards, and proceeds to detail to me how he thinks it’s going to go, in detail, and with a very domineering manner.
His clothing tells me that he’s military, and his mannerisms tell me that he thinks that he’s dealing with a subordinate. He also informed me how much he had paid for the thing, purchased in Italy (prices on that sort of thing came way down as time passed).
When he finally finishes, I then tell him how it actually works in my business, that I would do an initial diagnostic and that there would be a charge for that, and then we’d take it from there. And that was because it was a unit working with a European TV standard; I would be limited in terms of how much I could test the functionality.
Some time passes, and I have gone as far as plugging the thing in and finding out that there were some issues with the power supply that would need to be addressed before I could go any further with it, and I gave him an estimate of what that would cost.
He threw a fit, saying that the whole thing was taking way too long, and that he’d be in to pick it up. At that point, I informed him that there would be a diagnostic fee charged before he could take it, and he got even more p***ed off, but I stood firm.
Next thing I get is a letter from a lawyer that he’s engaged to deal with this matter. Fine, I handed the whole mess off to my lawyer and forgot about it for a while. Some correspondence went back and forth, and that was the extent of that. I never heard from the guy again, and still had that unit sitting around.
At some point, way later, I considered it “abandoned” and scrapped the silly thing.
