VI: Customers
If it’s hard being on the business end of a call, imagine how it feels for the lowly operator. Yeah, most are, as I stated, sociopaths with delusions of grandeur, and many are just angry jackasses, but a portion are, like me, just trying to get on in the world, make up some money and do bigger and better things with their lives. Well, most of us want to; some of us actually do.
The customers aren’t bad people. You know yourself, most are just frustrated; many don’t actually know what they’re doing and they’re embarrassed or confused; some think that they’ve tried everything; others are, like the agents mentioned above, sociopaths with delusions of grandeur or angry jackasses. You can sort out the peas from the beans pretty quickly.
I worked in quite a new ISP, having only opened three months before I started. Being an established brand in telephone lines, a lot of the customers were elderly, and, as such, were named “silver surfers”, which is a bastardization of a Marvel character if ever I heard one. Some didn’t know how to use a mouse; many had to be instructed on the correct manner in which to open a web page and a select few needed to be reminded that “wireless” didn’t mean that you can throw the router in the bin after you get it: it still needed to be plugged in. Yes, I know, Mrs. Jenkins, with wires.
You do get jackasses, of course, and it’s fun to find out that they’ve forgotten to do something quite simple like turn on the wi-fi or use a splitter. The worst were those who you couldn’t help. Their problems lay in the actual wiring of the house or the exchange or somewhere in between. Many simply couldn’t have broadband, and are shocked why they were sold a product that had no use in their area. Others still had a problem with their order. A great big song and dance. Like I said before, even if you couldn’t help them yet filled in the form incorrectly or forgot to ask one tiny question (“Built in splitters, perchance?”) then it was your fault and you were in super shit trouble.
I did get lovely people as well, people who just wanted help. I got old ladies, thankful for the help now that their husband had passed on. I got men who were eager for a laugh, children who wanted to play online, single mothers who wanted their daughters to do well at school, men who sounded like women and laughed about it and vice versa.
I also spoke to Jade Goody’s mother, who, incidentally, fell into the latter category.
