I am responding to a ticket from our recruitment manager to customize the work email address for a new hire. This particular manager sends us a LOT of stupid little tickets, and the office manager has had enough.

Office Manager: “Why are you humoring [Recruitment Manager] with his ticket? He sends in so many every day. He needs to learn that we can’t give his hires customized email addresses.”

Me: “I know, but this one is something I thought we could do for him.”

Office Manager: “Why?”

Me: “Because all the work emails are the initial letter and surname followed by @ and then the company name.”

Office Manager: “Why are you explaining something to me that everyone knows?”

Me: “Because what you don’t know is that the new hire he wants us to set up a work email for is called Theresa Watt.”

Office Manager: “So? That just means… Oh… Oh!”

Me: “So, I figured I’d let ‘Twatts’ add her middle initial to… ease the onboarding process.”

He left me alone after that.

I was leading a meeting in which we were making some technical decisions about our product design. One guy on the team, the technical expert, was very much the prima donna. He really did have unique skills and information that were incredibly valuable to the program, but he was a complete arrogant jerk. Someone in the meeting said something [Expert] disagreed with, and he started yelling, cursing, pounding his fists, and stomping his feet. Everyone was staring at him like he was insane.

I waited silently until he wound down.

Me: *Calmly* “You know, [Expert], when my two-year-old yells, stomps his feet, and pounds his fists, I give him a snack and send him to his room until he calms down. I’m going to suggest now that we end this meeting, get some coffee and cookies from the break room, and go back to our offices, and I’ll reschedule this when we’re all ready to resume. Okay?”

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone realized that I’d just called our technical expert a temperamental toddler. Then, [Expert] turned so red I thought he was going to explode at me, but three other people stood up and said, “Yes, that’s a great idea,” and physically interposed themselves between [Expert] and me while others basically escorted him out.

He never spoke to me again after that, but not long thereafter, we hired another expert in the same field and he was soon made redundant.

My roommates and I decided to go grab food from [Sandwich Chain] before we went out one Friday night. One of my roommates is half-Ecuadorian, and the [Sandwich Chain] employees were both Hispanic.

While I was in the process of ordering my sandwich, the two workers were speaking to each other in Spanish. When it was my friend’s turn, he ordered in Spanish, which I thought was simply a gesture. I couldn’t figure out why both employees looked like ghosts and stammered their way through the entire ordering process.

When I got back in the car, my friend said that the two workers said, “Look at this f****** pretty boy, pretending to be cultured. What a [homophobic slur]; he doesn’t even know the language.”

At that point, my friend decided to place his entire order in Spanish — and thank them at the end of the transaction.

Related:
If You Wouldn’t Say It To Their Face, Don’t Say It Near Their Ears, Part 4
If You Wouldn’t Say It To Their Face, Don’t Say It Near Their Ears, Part 3
If You Wouldn’t Say It To Their Face, Don’t Say It Near Their Ears, Part 2
If You Wouldn’t Say It To Their Face, Don’t Say It Near Their Ears

I work in IT for a retail company. At the height (middle?) of global ickiness when things were starting to reopen after everything had been closed, we were swamped. Between people having forgotten their passwords, computers being off and needing to go through 1,000 updates — if they were even able to find the network/domain— and getting new hires into the system because we’d lost some people when things closed, there was just a lot going on. Our hold times were pretty bad while we tried to work through everything.

Normally, I can just roll with most of the “you guys should be better” talk, but unfortunately, right around the time of this particular call, I was not in the best emotional state due to losing my grandfather suddenly. I got a call from a user who immediately started in with the complaining.

User: “Why was I waiting for so long? This is ridiculous. You guys need to answer your phones faster.”

Me: “I apologize for the wait. We’ve been a bit backed up with everyone needing to get back on due to everything reopening. How can I assist you today?”

User: “Yeah, we’ve got a register down, and we need it fixed. Someone already submitted a ticket, but we haven’t had anyone out to fix it.”

Me: “Do you have the ticket number or the submitter’s name?”

User: “No.”

Me: “Bear with me for a moment, please.”

We are able to look up incidents without the ticket or a name, but without either to help narrow it down, we have to go through anything that’s been submitted by the location (and hope it was submitted correctly in the first place).

Luckily, I found the ticket.

Me: “Okay, I see that [Person] submitted the incident for [device] not turning on?”

User: “That’s the correct device.”

Me: “Okay, from the ticket, you guys already checked all the cables and tried a different port, and still nothing?”

User: “Yes. Someone needs to get out here now.”

Me: “I show that the ticket was just submitted about forty-five minutes ago. It is in the queue for [On-Site] technicians to come out, but it hasn’t been assigned to anyone yet. They haven’t had time to do so.”

User: “So why can’t you help us?”

Me: “Because this is a physical issue and sounds like either the cables or the device itself will need to be swapped out. That’s [On-Site]’s job. Since the device is offline, I can’t see it or connect to it to try and do anything. This needs hands-on support.”

User: “Fine. Have a good day.”

He started to hang up the phone but didn’t seat it all the way, so I heard this next bit.

User: “Well, she was just useless. Why would she have been hired?”

I hung up the phone and took a few seconds to almost cry; again, I can normally let this stuff go, but at that point, my emotions were just too raw. Thankfully (I think), right after that call, I had a team meeting. In the meeting, our managers were reminding us not to stress too much and just take each call as it comes.

Me: “Is there any way we can remind stores that we know we’re backed up, but we’re trying, and that everything is still being handled the way it was previously? We shouldn’t be getting told that we’re useless.”

Manager: “We’ll see about getting that communication out. If you have a specific interaction, please let me know.”

I sent him a direct message through our internal chat.

Me: “I was talking to [User] at [Location], and when I told him that their ticket had been submitted forty-five minutes earlier and just hadn’t had a chance to be assigned, he tried to hang up but didn’t completely, so I got to hear him say that I was useless and ask why I was hired.”

Manager: “Thank you for this info. I’ll follow up with his manager.”

A day or so later, my manager messaged me.

Manager: “Hey, [My Name], I just wanted to let you know that I reached out to [User]’s manager and explained that his behavior was inappropriate. His manager was going to talk to him about it and wanted me to let you know that if you get a call from him again or he reaches out to you directly, let someone know.”

Luckily, nothing further happened between the user and me, but the fact that his manager felt the need to make us aware of the potential for any kind of retaliation made me wonder just how many similar complaints had happened and what he’d done in the past.

A customer approaches the customer service desk with their phone screen open to a form. They approach my manager.

Customer: “Your online feedback form is only asking me how I’d like to resolve my complaint, but I wanted to leave a compliment.”

Manager: “Oh, yes, the system is used to receiving negative feedback. We don’t… uh… get people filling out the form just to say thank you.”

Customer: “Well, that’s a little sad. Still, which option should I select?”

Manager: “There should be an option to select ‘other’?”

Customer: “Ah, yes, here it is, and… oh, dear.”

Manager: “Is there an issue?”

Customer: “Now it’s asking me on a scale of one to ten how dissatisfied I was with your service, one being the least satisfied and ten being the… ‘most least satisfied’? Who wrote this?!”

Manager: “Honestly, I don’t know.”

Customer: “Actually, I am going to leave a complaint! I’m going to complain that all I can do is complain! You’ve been wonderful! Thank you!”