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This is my story I was reminded of from the "Has an SC ever made you cry" thread.
This story comes from my job for the software company I've posted about a few times before (if you haven't read about this one search for what not to do when evading taxes OR my most and least favorite boss). This story occurred in 2000 so I don’t have specific conversation details but I do remember roughly what happened and how it made me feel.
I'm working by myself handling phone calls and we were incredibly slow that night. I was working on finishing up some code and had a few computers to put together for an install that was happening in a few days. I get most of the work done, its nearing time for the shift change and I'm looking forward to going home for the night.
Now this job was my first job ever where I was responsible for answering phones in any capacity so I was still wet behind the ears as far as customer service skills went. I get a phone call about 20 minutes before its time for me to leave and the first thing the man on the other end starts out with is to yell and begin swearing about a computer not working and how we had better help him get it fixed because he is losing money.
Just a quick aside, this software company was dealing in point of sale systems for restaurants.
Anyway this guy is absolutely livid and is swearing up a storm. I recognize his voice since I've spoken to him before and he is the owner of the store he is calling from. Now at this place I was the newest employee and therefore low man on the totem pole. In retrospect I think I was treated the way I was on this call because of this fact.
The issue as it turns out is that this guy had a bad video card and was wanting us to get it replaced for them. I was attempting several times to instruct him how to check on it but he simply would not listen. This was exasperating me and he was simply continuing to yell and scream about how I needed to fix it. Finally I lost it and yelled back, “I’m trying to help but you won’t listen to anything I’m saying.” At which point he started spouting about how no one speaks to him that way. Eventually he hands the phone off to his wife/ co-owner of the store.
She is calm, but still clearly very angry. I’m upset from being yelled at and at this point I’m literally shaking. Lady still would not listen to my attempts to help them troubleshoot the issue and see if it could be fixed they were insisting that we needed to have someone out there today to replace the video card. This was a physical impossibility as they were in another state and the best we could do to get it looked at asap would be to contract a local computer store to look at it for them. I explain this (its after 8pm) which was completely unacceptable to them. At this point they demand to speak to my boss.
So I put them on hold, try calling the boss and get his voice mail. I leave him a message and try his home number (which we were instructed to call only under extreme circumstances which it was to me since I was practically freaking out over being yelled at) and get the same thing, again I leave him a message.
I go back to the “lady” which I use the term loosely now in retrospect. Now again being the new guy I wasn’t sure how many people the boss knew and he had done an install or two for some people who were friends of his. I knew this. I offered at this point to have the boss call them ASAP since I could not get a hold of him, which again was not acceptable and we needed to resolve this issue NOW!!!!!
One more thing for me to add at this point… The store in question had 5 computers total. 2 front registers, 2 for taking phone orders, and a back office computer. The computer that was down was the back office computer. The system was designed to be able to run any function from any of the computers including the nightly back up etc. So the bit about them “losing money” was completely bogus as they were still able to process orders just fine. This is one more thing that has really only occurred to me in retrospect and makes me all the more mad at how this situation turned out.
Lady eventually spins a story about how she had the boss man’s cell phone number, but had simply misplaced it. Me being in my frazzled and rather emotional state didn’t think anything of it and gave it to her. I realized my mistake about two minutes later. After she got what she wanted she hung up. I warned my replacement about the issue, called the boss man to leave another message and went home, flipped on the most violent game I had, and played for 4 hours straight until I calmed down. During this my boss called me home to ask me what went down (this was a whole two or three hours after the fact, around midnight or so) and I explained my side of things. He tells me they wanted me fired for being incompetent which got me worked up all over again and before the boss could get a word in edgewise I offered to quit. Boss man tells me he told them in no uncertain where to get off and that if they ever lied to one of his employees again he would refuse them service from then on.
As it turns out in the end the video card had been having problems before and without telling us they had a third party company replace the video card, they were refusing my attempts to troubleshoot the issue because they were afraid I would find out the video card was not the original one that came with the computer. When this came out we pretty much told them they were screwed as far as service from us went and they had to deal with that 3rd party company for any hardware issues. Boss man was pretty livid with them, but nothing else came from me giving his cell number out and he forgave me for slipping up on that and ended up buying me a steak dinner the next night to make up for the whole mess.
In closing I once again reassert that this particular boss is probably one of the best bosses I’ve ever worked for.
This story comes from my job for the software company I've posted about a few times before (if you haven't read about this one search for what not to do when evading taxes OR my most and least favorite boss). This story occurred in 2000 so I don’t have specific conversation details but I do remember roughly what happened and how it made me feel.
I'm working by myself handling phone calls and we were incredibly slow that night. I was working on finishing up some code and had a few computers to put together for an install that was happening in a few days. I get most of the work done, its nearing time for the shift change and I'm looking forward to going home for the night.
Now this job was my first job ever where I was responsible for answering phones in any capacity so I was still wet behind the ears as far as customer service skills went. I get a phone call about 20 minutes before its time for me to leave and the first thing the man on the other end starts out with is to yell and begin swearing about a computer not working and how we had better help him get it fixed because he is losing money.
Just a quick aside, this software company was dealing in point of sale systems for restaurants.
Anyway this guy is absolutely livid and is swearing up a storm. I recognize his voice since I've spoken to him before and he is the owner of the store he is calling from. Now at this place I was the newest employee and therefore low man on the totem pole. In retrospect I think I was treated the way I was on this call because of this fact.
The issue as it turns out is that this guy had a bad video card and was wanting us to get it replaced for them. I was attempting several times to instruct him how to check on it but he simply would not listen. This was exasperating me and he was simply continuing to yell and scream about how I needed to fix it. Finally I lost it and yelled back, “I’m trying to help but you won’t listen to anything I’m saying.” At which point he started spouting about how no one speaks to him that way. Eventually he hands the phone off to his wife/ co-owner of the store.
She is calm, but still clearly very angry. I’m upset from being yelled at and at this point I’m literally shaking. Lady still would not listen to my attempts to help them troubleshoot the issue and see if it could be fixed they were insisting that we needed to have someone out there today to replace the video card. This was a physical impossibility as they were in another state and the best we could do to get it looked at asap would be to contract a local computer store to look at it for them. I explain this (its after 8pm) which was completely unacceptable to them. At this point they demand to speak to my boss.
So I put them on hold, try calling the boss and get his voice mail. I leave him a message and try his home number (which we were instructed to call only under extreme circumstances which it was to me since I was practically freaking out over being yelled at) and get the same thing, again I leave him a message.
I go back to the “lady” which I use the term loosely now in retrospect. Now again being the new guy I wasn’t sure how many people the boss knew and he had done an install or two for some people who were friends of his. I knew this. I offered at this point to have the boss call them ASAP since I could not get a hold of him, which again was not acceptable and we needed to resolve this issue NOW!!!!!
One more thing for me to add at this point… The store in question had 5 computers total. 2 front registers, 2 for taking phone orders, and a back office computer. The computer that was down was the back office computer. The system was designed to be able to run any function from any of the computers including the nightly back up etc. So the bit about them “losing money” was completely bogus as they were still able to process orders just fine. This is one more thing that has really only occurred to me in retrospect and makes me all the more mad at how this situation turned out.
Lady eventually spins a story about how she had the boss man’s cell phone number, but had simply misplaced it. Me being in my frazzled and rather emotional state didn’t think anything of it and gave it to her. I realized my mistake about two minutes later. After she got what she wanted she hung up. I warned my replacement about the issue, called the boss man to leave another message and went home, flipped on the most violent game I had, and played for 4 hours straight until I calmed down. During this my boss called me home to ask me what went down (this was a whole two or three hours after the fact, around midnight or so) and I explained my side of things. He tells me they wanted me fired for being incompetent which got me worked up all over again and before the boss could get a word in edgewise I offered to quit. Boss man tells me he told them in no uncertain where to get off and that if they ever lied to one of his employees again he would refuse them service from then on.
As it turns out in the end the video card had been having problems before and without telling us they had a third party company replace the video card, they were refusing my attempts to troubleshoot the issue because they were afraid I would find out the video card was not the original one that came with the computer. When this came out we pretty much told them they were screwed as far as service from us went and they had to deal with that 3rd party company for any hardware issues. Boss man was pretty livid with them, but nothing else came from me giving his cell number out and he forgave me for slipping up on that and ended up buying me a steak dinner the next night to make up for the whole mess.
In closing I once again reassert that this particular boss is probably one of the best bosses I’ve ever worked for.
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