This is my day: I’m minding my business one minute, and someone is screaming into my ear the next. I’ve learned to live with it. Really, it’s pretty much like parenting a teenager — you’re going to get called some names.
Bob was on the other end of the line, and he wasn’t a happy camper.
“What the hell!” he sputtered. “What the freakin’ hell!”
Bob didn’t seem to be the most articulate of people.
“This freakin’ piece of crap phone!” he yelled. I suspected that he was unhappy with his phone.
“Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap!”
I wasn’t sure what that noise was, but it sounded like someone slamming their phone against a table.
“Can you hear me now?” he asked.
“Yes, I can hear you. I could hear you all along” I answered.
“Oh… uh… yeah. Stupid phone cuts out on me all the time. That’s what I called about.”
“I see,” I said. “And is everything resolved now?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was great! So how much do I owe you?”
I looked at the clock. Two minutes, and there was a three-minute minimum. “I believe that’s $7.50, and the charge will appear on your next bill. Thanks for calling, and have a great day!” I said.
“Thanks!” he answered. “You too!” He hung up.
It’s probably a stupid way to make a living, but it’s a living. A pretty good one most of the time, and it doesn’t ask a lot of me. People like to vent, I give them a place to vent. Like I said, I have a teenage daughter. Believe me, there’s nothing anyone can say to me over the phone that’s any worse than what I’ve heard at home. I’ve been doing this for a month now, 1-800-STEAMED, and there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly willing to pay for the privilege of yelling at someone. Oh, sure, they could yell at the responsible party in the first place, but that’s usually not an option. If it’s some business, they’ll just get trapped in rotary hell, being shifted from one department to another, until they finally get connected to some low-level employee who is liable to break down and cry if one more customer yells at him or her.
And that’s if they can actually get through. Most of the time, they sit and listen to a busy signal or some chirpy background music until they realize that they’ve put their entire life on hold for thirty minutes or so and hang up. There’s not much satisfaction in that. So I let them call me, I pick up the phone with some innocuous greeting, and — invariably — they start right in, screaming about this or that. Bob, for example, hated his phone. I could have given him some advice. I could have told him to ditch the piece of crap and go buy something else, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to yell at someone. He wanted to pound the phone on a table while someone else listened. And that’s exactly what he did, that’s exactly what I let him do. Why argue with a paying customer?
I was initially surprised at the number of angry people out there and the variety of their complaints. I expected people to call and complain about their cars, their utility bills, the construction crew outside their house. But instead, I got people calling to complain about their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mothers-in-law. I got people calling to complain about the demise of harmony in modern music. I got people calling to complain about the girth of young people. I got people calling to yell at that jerk who cut them off at the gas station.
Everybody’s mad about something, it seems, and none of them are really able to do anything about it, anything other than complain, anything other than yell at the wrong person. If it hadn’t turned out to be so lucrative, I might have been tempted to complain about all the complaints, but I’ve found a way to enjoy them. The angst of others is what lines my pockets, in a manner of speaking. Their ills are my riches.
It’s gotten so bad — or good, depending on the way you look at it — that I’m thinking about hiring some help. Someone to handle the phones while I step out for lunch. Or go on vacation. Or maybe, just once, go wait at the gas station and yell at the next jerk who cuts someone off.
No Comments