Senior Moments

[dougiezerts]

Do we excuse bad behavior among seniors just because they're. . . seniors?
Yesterday, I got an old lady on the phone who said that she got a wrong number from us. It turns out that the number wasn't wrong, she just didn't remember it right! So I personally gave her the number again--and she wrote it down wrong! She kept on mistaking the 9's for 5's!

[Eben56]

Do we excuse bad behavior among seniors just because they're. . . seniors?

They should be held to no less nor no greater a standard than any one else. I have put great thought to this as I will be soon among them.

Day in and day out, we deal with people who are occasionally really fucked up.

I ask you... How many times have you read on this forum about people who can not comprehend your reading the number to them, or where their zip code is, etc.

Most of the time there is no mention of age... When the perp is really old or very young, it usually comes out in the tale.

While I understand that because of ahlziemers there is a percentage increase in mental inactuity, I firmly believe the young cause us much more headaches in the long run. I also sometimes think we overemphasize the actions of the elderly because they are slower. We bitch when people will not wait a few minutes because of one reason or another, yet we bitch when they make us wait a few minutes for one reason or another.

Sorry... Just a very mellow philosophical evening for me.

[JoitheArtist]

My company's demographic is women over 50, so when I worked in the call center, I routinely heard from women ages 45-90. And my final decision was: the old ladies were really ok, most of the time. You had some who were kinda helpless, and some who were pretty slow, but they were generally nice and good customers, as long as you were patient (which, when you're answering that many phones a day, sometimes it was nice to take a long, slow, courteous call.)

But the Baby Boomers...whole 'nother story. In my experience they were the biggest tightwads, the rudest, and bar none the worst EWs. Apologies to any decent Boomers here but ye gods, your generation! Yikes.

Can't speak for the under 40 crowd, haven't had them as customers recently.

[AmethystSquirrel]

I get a lot of seniors who expect free food because they are seniors.

One thing that did happen a LOT when DD ran a set of coupons in the paper.
Mind you, ALL of the coupons said in BOLD print: One Coupon Per Customer per purchase. All of them also said "state and federal taxes apply"
The coupons were as follow:

1. Buy a breakfast sandwich for $.99
2. Free Hash Browns when you buy a breakfast sandwich
3. Free Medium coffee with the purchase of any breakfast sandwich.

I had a couple different people throw fits and tantrums when we would not allow them to use all three at once. Basically they wanted coffee, sandwich and hasbrowns for 99 cents.

I actually had the following conversation;

SC: Look honey i am old and you have to respect that i could die tomorrow and i won;t get to use m coupons so you better use them all now.
Me: Ma'am I am sorry i can not.
SC: You're the manager you can look the other way
Me:No ma'am I can't I am sorry
SC: Damnit I Could DIE!!!!!!!!! *fist pounds on the counter*
Me; Ma'am I could get hit by a car and die today so no i can not and will not allow you to have all this food for 99 cents.
SC damnit young whippersnapper just give me the sandwich.
Me. OK ma'am would you like coffee with that?
SC: NO
Me. Ok that will be $1.07
SC WHAT? IT SAYS 99 CENTS
Me. Yes ma'am but you have to still pay tax.
SC damnit the only thing guaranteed is taxes.
Me. And death, You forgot death is guaranteed
SC Are you being smart with me
Me. Yes ma'am I am.
SC DAMNIT STOP MA'AMing me. You are ok! here is $2 keep the change and give me my sandwich
Me. Thank you ma'am
I ended up giving her a free small coffee since she was too funny in the end.

[One-Fang]

I think nobody gets any special treatment. Sucky is as sucky does.

However, mistaking one number for another, even constantly, doesn't qualify in my book. That's an honest (if annoying) mistake, and I never count honest mistakes as sucky.

Well, slightly sucky in that they're annoying to deal with. But real sucktitude is reserved for the almost deliberate going out of your way to make somebody else's day worse. The bad attitudes, the lack of manners, the unreasonable demands.

No matter how old the sucky person might be.

[draftermatt]

Please be paitent with seniors.

My grandmother is 85 and we are damn sure she has early stages of dementia/alzheimers. (Even though her doc says she's fine) You can still talk to her, and she knows who you are.

But she doesn't remember to pay her bills, how to get to the post office, what the doctor said 20 minutes later, etc.

We are working on taking her license away (she's not driving right now because she broke a vertabrae) having her mail rerouted to my mother's house, someone always go with her to the doc, etc.

But she is still independent and wants to do it all on her own, despite admitting there's a problem (to some people, she argues with my mother that she's fine).

You may think she's a "crazy sucky old lady" but the fact is she's confused.

[dougiezerts]

Please be paitent with seniors.

My grandmother is 85 and we are damn sure she has early stages of dementia/alzheimers. (Even though her doc says she's fine) You can still talk to her, and she knows who you are.

But she doesn't remember to pay her bills, how to get to the post office, what the doctor said 20 minutes later, etc.

We are working on taking her license away (she's not driving right now because she broke a vertabrae) having her mail rerouted to my mother's house, someone always go with her to the doc, etc.

But she is still independent and wants to do it all on her own, despite admitting there's a problem (to some people, she argues with my mother that she's fine).

You may think she's a "crazy sucky old lady" but the fact is she's confused.

I'm sorry, but we don't have the time to be patient with confused people.
We must maintain a CST (customer service time) of 25 seconds per call. If I get 1 or 2 confused costumers who don't understand me, or who take a long time to express their thoughts, that messes that up, and I can get in trouble for it. And that puts my job on the line.
I have to be abrupt with some customers. Sorry.

[Anriana]

I work tech support with a talk time I have no trouble meeting.

I love old people if it's not close to time for a break or lunch, and I definitely excuse things for them. I don't expect them to completely understand all this newfangled technology that's become popular after they retired. Also, old people tend to be much more willing to follow my directions than baby boomers. It's nice having someone who doesn't argue and tells you fun stories about when TV only had three channels.

[Snowbird]

I'm sorry, but we don't have the time to be patient with confused people.
We must maintain a CST (customer service time) of 25 seconds per call. If I get 1 or 2 confused costumers who don't understand me, or who take a long time to express their thoughts, that messes that up, and I can get in trouble for it. And that puts my job on the line.
I have to be abrupt with some customers. Sorry.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like your job sucks. Or at least your company's policies. Ugh.

As to dealing with older folks, it just takes patience, as you would with children or the challenged. It can be aggravating but in the end you just might make their day. I always thought of my grandmothers when things like that happened and treated the customer with the same respect and patience. Thinking about it now though, I can't really recall ever having a sucky elderly customer.

[smileyeagle1021]

I'm sorry, but we don't have the time to be patient with confused people.
We must maintain a CST (customer service time) of 25 seconds per call. If I get 1 or 2 confused costumers who don't understand me, or who take a long time to express their thoughts, that messes that up, and I can get in trouble for it. And that puts my job on the line.
I have to be abrupt with some customers. Sorry.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like your job sucks. Or at least your company's policies. Ugh.

ditto, I'd say that is more a morons in management issue than sucky customers... in fairness to my company which has some really big moron in management issues they do understand there is only so much you can control... so for really long handle times they take it on a call be call basis, if you have a 45 minute call and it's because the caller had a shit load of questions and you kept mainly on topic (they actually encourage a little OT to remind callers that we are indeed human and not just reading a script) you'll be fine, have a 45 minute call and you're talking about nothing but high school memories then your ass is grass.

[iradney]

Back when I was a phone jockey at *Company*, we didn't really have a SET time for calls. Some calls could be resolved in one minute, others in 2 hours. It all depended on what the customer needed. So yeah, when we got the occasional Age Advantaged person, we could explain things over and over if we needed to.
A 25 second time limit is a little ridiculous in my opinion, but that's obviously people in corporate who've never actually been on the frontline.

[Pagan]

I get a lot of seniors who expect free food because they are seniors.

And then there's the ones that whip out the, "I'm on a fixed income" line. Like we're not? I'd love to have a job where I could go in from week to week and tell them how much I needed!

SC: Damnit I Could DIE!!!!!!!!! *fist pounds on the counter*
Me; Ma'am I could get hit by a car and die today so no i can not and will not allow you to have all this food for 99 cents.

I've never gotten this one either and have had exactly the same thought as you.

Hate to break it to them, but nobody gets out of life alive!

[greensinestro]

This reminds me of the time when a lady called about not being able to dial a number, which was something like 533-ROOF. She got upset that this number would not go through, was insistent it was right, being it was out of the book. It turned out she was using the zero for the letter O when dialing in ROOF. This was our fault though, not hers.

[RootedPhoenix]

I'm sorry, but we don't have the time to be patient with confused people.
We must maintain a CST (customer service time) of 25 seconds per call. If I get 1 or 2 confused costumers who don't understand me, or who take a long time to express their thoughts, that messes that up, and I can get in trouble for it. And that puts my job on the line.
I have to be abrupt with some customers. Sorry.

How does your company deal with TTY relays? Those take forever and into the following week, and there's not a thing you can do about it. (I'm not trying to be jerky, I'm just wondering.)

[smileyeagle1021]

And then there's the ones that whip out the, "I'm on a fixed income" line. Like we're not? I'd love to have a job where I could go in from week to week and tell them how much I needed!

yes, but you see, you can always work more hours if you need
yeah, because my 46 to 72 hours a week is so easy to expand if I need to...