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There's no one here on weekends, so those of us who DO come in wind up fielding the phone.
No particular reason. On weekdays, this place is fully staffed. Dial the main number, wind through the electronic switchboard, get the person you want. On weekends, for some acephalous reason, dial the main number, wind through the electronic switchboard, get US. Why? Because we happen to be here. If they're stupid enough and determined enough, they'll get to us eventually.
We're not trained in customer service. I'm lucky enough to have a CS background, but we're not expected to field customer complaints.
Or loons.
My industry has a certain degree of cachet, so the crunchiest of the nutbars will ring us up, hoping we'll wield some kind of influence; with no other staff to get to, they wind up on our telephonic doorstep.
"Hello, you've reached *business,* how may I help you?"
"Hello?"
"Hello, may I help you?"
"I want to talk to (someone who isn't here)."
"I'm sorry, they're not here right now; can I send you over to his voice mail?"
What follows is breathless and rapid.
"I was in the military in 1972 and 1974 when they called us up for active duty in Vietnam, and I want to talk about the experiments they performed on our heads; I can still feel the scar where they implanted the microchip; they're training elephants to carry nuclear warheads; I once saw a man turn into a woman right before my eyes; it's all part of the CIA's plan to declare martial law so that Obama can create a one-world government; the electric company has been sending signals through the chip so that I can see the flying saucers; I've discovered that I can make the sofa glow if I hold my breath long enough; there's an elephant on my front lawn; President Bush dropped bombs on St. Louis to scare off the Russians; I spent some time in Paris, France; there's a basement to the Eiffel Tower where they conduct experiments on dogs to teach them to talk; my cat left a message in his litter box all about it; I tried writing a letter to Senator Snowe and Congressman Barney Frank, but when I saw their eyes glowing red on C-Span I knew that they were part of the conspiracy..."
This is a paraphrase, but I promise you that four of the above clauses are things he actually said, and will leave it to you to decide which ones they are. The guy just seemed so relieved to be talking to someone who worked at an institution with some clout that he was ready to dump his whole story in my ear before I hung up.
Which I did.
He called back twice, both times diving right back into his diatribe without so much as drawing breath, and any and all attempts on my part to divert him to the voice mail of the people whose job it is to deal with this kind of crap went unheard.
I'd read a long time ago that one of the symptoms of some kinds of paranoid schizophrenia is to believe that someone otherwise innocuous, say, the electric company, is persecuting you; and you wind up compelled to report the conspiracy to some authority, in the hopes that if you can just tell the right people, everything will be okay. Roommate Red, in his capacity on the front lines of customer service in a similar institution, has a library of crank letters either from people convinced that we're the ones out to get them and for them to knock it off or they'll report them to the FBI, or pleading for help against another institution that's been persecuting them.
Whichever it is, there's enough of it going on to make me believe that whatever they're putting into the water supply, there's either too much of it or not enough.
Love, Who?
No particular reason. On weekdays, this place is fully staffed. Dial the main number, wind through the electronic switchboard, get the person you want. On weekends, for some acephalous reason, dial the main number, wind through the electronic switchboard, get US. Why? Because we happen to be here. If they're stupid enough and determined enough, they'll get to us eventually.
We're not trained in customer service. I'm lucky enough to have a CS background, but we're not expected to field customer complaints.
Or loons.
My industry has a certain degree of cachet, so the crunchiest of the nutbars will ring us up, hoping we'll wield some kind of influence; with no other staff to get to, they wind up on our telephonic doorstep.
"Hello, you've reached *business,* how may I help you?"
"Hello?"
"Hello, may I help you?"
"I want to talk to (someone who isn't here)."
"I'm sorry, they're not here right now; can I send you over to his voice mail?"
What follows is breathless and rapid.
"I was in the military in 1972 and 1974 when they called us up for active duty in Vietnam, and I want to talk about the experiments they performed on our heads; I can still feel the scar where they implanted the microchip; they're training elephants to carry nuclear warheads; I once saw a man turn into a woman right before my eyes; it's all part of the CIA's plan to declare martial law so that Obama can create a one-world government; the electric company has been sending signals through the chip so that I can see the flying saucers; I've discovered that I can make the sofa glow if I hold my breath long enough; there's an elephant on my front lawn; President Bush dropped bombs on St. Louis to scare off the Russians; I spent some time in Paris, France; there's a basement to the Eiffel Tower where they conduct experiments on dogs to teach them to talk; my cat left a message in his litter box all about it; I tried writing a letter to Senator Snowe and Congressman Barney Frank, but when I saw their eyes glowing red on C-Span I knew that they were part of the conspiracy..."
This is a paraphrase, but I promise you that four of the above clauses are things he actually said, and will leave it to you to decide which ones they are. The guy just seemed so relieved to be talking to someone who worked at an institution with some clout that he was ready to dump his whole story in my ear before I hung up.
Which I did.
He called back twice, both times diving right back into his diatribe without so much as drawing breath, and any and all attempts on my part to divert him to the voice mail of the people whose job it is to deal with this kind of crap went unheard.
I'd read a long time ago that one of the symptoms of some kinds of paranoid schizophrenia is to believe that someone otherwise innocuous, say, the electric company, is persecuting you; and you wind up compelled to report the conspiracy to some authority, in the hopes that if you can just tell the right people, everything will be okay. Roommate Red, in his capacity on the front lines of customer service in a similar institution, has a library of crank letters either from people convinced that we're the ones out to get them and for them to knock it off or they'll report them to the FBI, or pleading for help against another institution that's been persecuting them.
Whichever it is, there's enough of it going on to make me believe that whatever they're putting into the water supply, there's either too much of it or not enough.
Love, Who?
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