good stalker / bad stalker

[that_chick_in_I.T.]

If you've ever worked in a helpdesk and been reasonably competent at your job - you've probably had a stalker. You know - the client who calls all the time, decides s/he likes you, and only wants to speak to you. Some of them actively request you - get your e-mail address or personal extension - others just try to call when they know they're likely to get you.

A stalker or two can be a good thing. When you're not too busy, and a customer or two specifically requests to speak to you, that looks kind of good in front of management. Then there are the "ohnodeargodididnotgetthisassholeAGAIN!!!!!1" callers who seem to be put on this planet to make your job hard.

Good Stalker: That guy with the freakin' sweet auto body site who loves talking to you because he says you always get the problem solved in like 30 seconds.
Bad Stalker: That angry bastard who asks for you - your extension and your e-mail address - and refuses to speak to anyone but you because he hates you slightly less than the rest of the helpdesk staff.

Good Stalker: That cool lady who calls with the interesting e-commerce issues and cracks you up by telling her screaming kid in the background that you're Santa's helper and you're updating the naughty/nice database right now.
Bad Stalker: That damn woman who speaks 3 words of English and uses them to keep asking the same retarded question over. and over. and OVER!

[saint]

Good Stalker: The nice guy who asks for me becuase he says I have the best personality and smile of all our staff
Bad Stalker:Weird lady that asks for me. She been too high, for too long, has no teath, and I can barely understand her.

[technical.angel]

Good Stalker: Prof that calls me to either talk shop, or to report an outage right as it happens. Plus, he actually knows what he's talking about, and does some low level troubleshooting for other professors in his building.

Bad Stalker: Staff member of the third floor of a building with rather oddly spaced stairs, who can not sufficently state her problem, gets frustrated and almost cries for most of her calls. Her problems are almost ALWAYS with Excel, which she is grossly misusing, has a really bad memory, calls once a week, usually with the same problem, and always demands that I go up to her office.

Jenni

[Dips]

Good stalker: Guy who wants to talk to me about a sale because I've been helpful and he wants to be sure I get credit for the sale. We don't keep track of who makes what sale, but it's a nice gesture.

Bad stalker: Guy who wants to talk to me just because I answered his very simple question last time and that makes me the "only person who can help [him]." The only way to get rid of this bad stalker is to take an extended vacation (a day or two won't work; it has be at least a week) such that his need for help overrides his ability to wait for me to come back. He will then begin to stalk the unlucky employee who answered his question in my absence until that employee take a vacation.

Good stalker: Person who takes time during his vacation to come by and see us because he thinks we're just awesome and wants to meet all of us in person. [We are a tiny company (twelve employees) and have only a few thousand customers, but they are spread all over the world. We do all of our business by phone and email and never get to meet them in person.]

Bad stalker: Person who comes by the office unannouced and expects the entire staff to drop everything and entertain him, while tons of work goes undone.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Good stalker: Person who comes into the store and seeks me out for help because I did such a good job helping him/her last time.

Bad stalker: Person who comes into the store 3 times a day just to talk to me because I made the mistake of once making small talk with him, and never buys anything.

[friendofjimmyk]

I don't know. "Good stalker" sounds like an oxymoron.

[Kogarashi]

Good Stalker: sweet old lady who has a set of favorite cashiers who always bag her things just right for her, and who is always a pleasure to serve.

Bad Stalker: mean lady who always goes to my coworker Lisa's line because she gets some weird kick out of telling Lisa what to do (namely, ordering Lisa to put all of her merchandise in big bags instead of the regular size). If Lisa's not obviously on a register at the time, mean lady goes to the self-checkouts (which only have regular bags, incidentally) because she doesn't like ordering anyone else around.

Lisa's Revenge: lately we've been very short on big bags. Lisa was on a register that was nowhere near any big bags today, and mean lady came to her line. Lisa was practically glowing at the fact that she could tell mean lady that we had no big bags. Mean lady was practically glowering at the defeat. Go Lisa. ::waves pennant::

[Horus]

If you've ever worked in a helpdesk and been reasonably competent at your job - you've probably had a stalker. You know - the client who calls all the time, decides s/he likes you, and only wants to speak to you. Some of them actively request you - get your e-mail address or personal extension - others just try to call when they know they're likely to get you.

A stalker or two can be a good thing. When you're not too busy, and a customer or two specifically requests to speak to you, that looks kind of good in front of management. Then there are the "ohnodeargodididnotgetthisassholeAGAIN!!!!!1" callers who seem to be put on this planet to make your job hard.

Good Stalker: That guy with the freakin' sweet auto body site who loves talking to you because he says you always get the problem solved in like 30 seconds.
Bad Stalker: That angry bastard who asks for you - your extension and your e-mail address - and refuses to speak to anyone but you because he hates you slightly less than the rest of the helpdesk staff.

Good Stalker: That cool lady who calls with the interesting e-commerce issues and cracks you up by telling her screaming kid in the background that you're Santa's helper and you're updating the naughty/nice database right now.
Bad Stalker: That damn woman who speaks 3 words of English and uses them to keep asking the same retarded question over. and over. and OVER!

God, oh God, I had the last one once. I had this one woman (Ukranian) I think, call in with a problem.

Me - Tech Support Extraordinaire
CL - Crazy lady.

Me: Hi, thank you for calling *company*, this is Horus speaking, how can I help you?
CL: Buckus!
Me: Uhh....pardon me?
CL: The buckus! The buckus the buckus the buckus! It no work!
Me: ...well, I'm sorry to hear that. Would you mind confirming your name and address please?
CL: THE BUCKUS! BUCKUS NOT WORKING!

This continued for 30 goddamn minutes. I was still in training when I got this call, so my supervisor pulled me into a "coaching room" and we listened to it. He was laughing his ass off through the whole thing...

Best part? Buckus apparently ended up meaning about 20 different things! And she called back about 6 times!

[Phone Jockey]

Good Cable Stalker: The lady who wants to speak with my supervisor to ensure sup hears how awesome I am.

Bad Cable Stalker: The guy who wants me to wait on the line while he orders a porn movie "just to make sure the Pay-Per-View is working."

Worse Cable Stalkers: The couple who call me about their "adult movies" while in the bathtub at that time.

[Horus]

Good Cable Stalker: The lady who wants to speak with my supervisor to ensure sup hears how awesome I am.

Bad Cable Stalker: The guy who wants me to wait on the line while he orders a porn movie "just to make sure the Pay-Per-View is working."

Worse Cable Stalkers: The couple who call me about their "adult movies" while in the bathtub at that time.

Yeah, had those before. Kinda nasty. One guy was breathing into the phone really, really hard. I don't want to THINK about what he was doing.

[JustADude]

Not technically the right forum for this, but I'd rather stick it here than start a new thread... especially since I ended up doing free A/V tech support for at least a solid 1% of the customers I talked to:

Good Blue Ticket Stalker: The cool guy that was working the new trade-in program to cycle unsold uBid stock for newer games and praised me to management as being the only guy out of the 5 stores in our city that knew what he was doing with the process.

Bad Blue Ticket Stalker: Guy who insisted on having massive religious debates (monologues/rants) with (at) me for months because I ventured an opinion about Passion of the Christ to someone else in his presence.