Random Telemarketers Describe Biggest Freakouts They've Experienced On Job (19 items)

• (#1) Grandma Dishing Out Sass

  From Redditor /u/formertelemarketer: 

  There are several of them that I and my coworkers find humorous that wouldn't be humorous to other people (such as when people try to tell us calling them is against the law, and they sound so f*cking uppity about it). I've heard more funny ones than I've been a part of. My favorite one was with an older grandmother who was watching one of her grandchildren. She was actually a sale, and halfway through the process, she asks me to hold on - obviously I say yes, then wait.

  I hear some commotion in the background, then she comes back. "Okay, can we expedite this? I'm making cookies with my grandson, and he just spilled a gallon of milk all over my slippers. He says he's sorry, but I know he isn't."

  [This is] followed by the shriek of a small child who's just been sassed (he had to be only like 5) yelling, "I AM SORRYYYYYYYYYYYY."

  [And the grandma saying,] "NO, YOU'RE NOT."
• (#2) Going Nuclear

  From Redditor /u/Relacuna:

  I, too, worked at a health insurance company, doing customer service for payments, plan changes, the fun stuff.

  This woman calls in, we ask for member ID, name, date of birth, and zip code. She yells at me right away that she didn't have her ID because she never got her "f*cking ID cards." Okay, so I go to name and date of birth, [and] she doesn't pull up in our system.

  I try everything I can think of, spelling the name differently, transposing numbers in her DOB to see if they were entered wrong, the whole thing.

  Since we only offer insurance in a small portion of the country, I ask for her state and zip code.

  She then SCREAMS in the phone to the point that the call is distorted, and I can't understand what she's trying to string together. I hear "f*ck," "g*ddamn," and "c*nt" clearly, and screaming sobs. This b*tch was going NUCLEAR.

  I again try the second search of asking for state and zip code. Which... makes her lose her sh*t even more. She manages to stop scream-crying, and just YELLS at me that she hopes my mother r*pes me like we're r*ping her and hangs up.

  My supervisor was live monitoring that call, and was able to go in and get her phone number. She was calling from a state we don't even offer insurance in, she called the wrong company.
• (#3) The Existential Crisis

  From Redditor /u/OhBother:

  Once, a lady said she didn't know what I did to end up where I was in life. That one kind of stung.
• (#4) Just Doing Our Job

  From Redditor /u/newm1070:

  I worked at my [university's] phone center for three years calling alum and parents, asking for donations. I loved it and rocked at it. I raised 50k last year for my school.

  Honestly the rejection doesn't even [faze] me - you are on the phone, you are most likely never going to see them ever in your life, so f*ck 'em, you don't need them. It also creates great small-talk skills and made me a lot more confident because I do not have a fear of rejection anymore. I can go up to guys at bars, hit on 'em, and not worry about being shot down. I now work at a publishing company calling teachers and same thing, but the teachers are a lot nicer. I do have some horror stories, though, from my university phone center.

  I have been called a f*ggot multiple times on the phone when making small talk. You know, you talk about what they were involved in and what you are, I would say I was involved in the school's GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance] club and apparently that did not sit well with some donors.

  To be fair, it is a Catholic school, so I should not have been too surprised. It gave me a tough skin, though, and I really did enjoy it. Some of the girls I worked with though would leave crying... some people are really jerks. Lesson of the story, don't forget that you are actually talking to a person on the other side of the phone, and treat them like you would treat someone face to face. We are just doing our job and making calls.
• (#5) The Callback

  From Redditor /u/purpleautumnleaf:

  Once my ex had a call from a telemarketer and was in a particularly bad mood, so the second he realized, he shouted, "F*ck off, you c*nt," and hung up. Not 20 seconds later, the phone rang and somebody shouted, "F*ck you, too, sir!" and hung up.
• (#6) 'I Don't Vote'

  From Redditor /u/CMonte420:

  I'd have to say the most memorable call I ever had was a guy in Arkansas. No matter how many times I told him I was calling about insurance, he kept saying, "I don't vote." He must have been in his late 60s or early 70s.

  No matter how clear or succinct I was with why I was calling, he insisted my call was related to politics. He proceeded to bash Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for about 30 minutes. He was extremely racist, and although offensive, it was very entertaining to hear. Dude was super passionate.

  After he ranted for what seemed like an hour, I asked him, "If you're so passionate about the president and politics why don't you vote?"

  His response was priceless. He sat for about 10 seconds in silence and responded, "Bars and liquor stores are closed on Election Day, and I wouldn't vote for any of these dirty f*ckers without being drunk as f*ck."

  Touché, sir. Well said.
• (#7) The Not-So-Early Riser

  From Redditor /u/OhBother:

  Well, I made calls for a environmental organization in Berkeley, CA, so as you can imagine, we had our fair share of nuts.

  Once a guy said, "You just woke me up, I haven't had a cigarette yet, and I need to poop, how do you think I'm doing?"
• (#8) Elocution Lessons

  From Redditor /u/TheRecklessOne:

  Worked in customer services for a bank.

  Me: Can I take your account number and sort code please?

  Customer: My star card? What's that?

  Me: No no, sort code.

  Customer: I don't have a star card.

  Me: Not star card, SORT CODE.

  Customer: I JUST TOLD YOU I DON'T HAVE A STAR CARD.

  Me: SOOORRRRRT COOOOODE. 

  Customer: Star code?

  Me: SORT CODE!

  Customer: I really don't understand what you're asking me for.

  Me: S-O-R-T C-O-D-E

  Customer: Sort code! Well, I think SOMEONE needs elocution lessons!

  I'm pretty sure SOMEONE needed a hearing aid.
• (#9) The Adult-Film Fan

  From Redditor /u/neureaucrat:

  Part of my job was updating TV packages and managing VOD services. Got a call from a lady asking me to reset her VOD password so she could "order some adult films." She was very obviously getting plowed during the call. Heavy breathing... grunting. I guess I didn't lose it. It was pretty hilarious.
• (#10) Death Threats Over A $2,000 Bill

  From Redditor /u/crustyruffles:

  I worked for a health insurance company. It was entry-level stuff. I'd basically take calls all day and go over benefits, answer questions on claims, and help people find doctors for their plan.

  I got a call from a woman around mid-day wanting to know why she got a $2,000 bill for a procedure. I looked everything over and explained to her that it was her deductible, and the insurance company paid the rest of the bill.

  She immediately loses it on me in some kind of combination of crying and screaming. The gist of it basically amounts to how she has insurance, so it should pay for everything. Not uncommon to hear. So I started to explain that her insurance was paying over $9,000 for this service, but she had to pay a bit also.

  Now the hysterics go into overdrive. She's wailing about losing her house because of this. She's going to have to file bankruptcy. And this is all because of kidney stones. I do my best empathy bit and tell her most places will work with her and make payment plans for balances, some even do more for those with lower incomes. I tell her I can get the hospital's billing department on the line for her and see what we can get done for her... which is way beyond what the company would ever want us to do, but I wanted to help.

  Woman finally starts to calm down a bit and asks me, since I work for the insurance company, if I have the same insurance she does. I tell her I do.

  She then tells me she hopes I die before I ever think of using the health insurance. At that point I'm being cussed out like no other, so I hung up on her.

  After the call I sat there for a second to collect my thoughts. I'd been yelled at and called all sorts of names before, but my mind immediately went to my mother. She had just finished radiation and chemo after a double mastectomy. She had over $300,000 in medical bills. She never complained once about them... She was just happy to be here and be better. Never did she pick up the phone and randomly start screaming a death wish at a total stranger that was trying to help her, no matter how upset she was.

  That was enough for me. On top of the usual bullsh*t of a call center (awful management, unrealistic productivity expectations, and a shark tank environment among peers) I was done. By that time I was able to apply for non-phone jobs at the company and I got the f*ck out of there. Almost three years later I've never been back in a call center and am much happier.
• (#11) Quittin' Time

  From Redditor /u/Blargmode:

  Boss insisted that we'd call people on a Friday from 17:00 to 22:00 [5:00 pm 10 10:00 pm] to do a 30-minute-long market survey. We argued that we'd only be yelled at for calling in the middle of dinner.
  And sure enough, we spent five awful hours being yelled at by angry people.

  After, when the shift was over, our boss was angry with how few answers we had managed to get and was giving us sh*t for it. That's when I quit.
• (#12) The Dutch Retaliation

  From Redditor /u/SebboNL:

  I was sent to do systems administration and support for a large Dutch TV production company. One day we had a MAJOR outage on our Citrix-environment, which brought the entire company to a stand-still.

  All users were understanding, save one. A former-paparazzo-turned-investigative-journalist known for his amoral tactics, which turned him into the flavor-du-jour, was somewhat pissed off with our perceived lackluster performance when it came to getting his team back online. Luckily (NOT!), this happened on the day of the week that it was my turn to man the phone lines.

  So, after an hour of, "Yeah, the cluster is down. We're working on it. Sorry!" and users voicing their discontent in a cool, calm, and collected way, this sh*tstain decides to grace me with a telephone call. It took three seconds for his condescension to turn into hostility, and another three seconds for this hostility to turn into plain abuse.

  After having been called such things as a "hoerenjong" ("whore's son"), a "randdebiel" ("borderline ret*rd"), and a "stomme klootzak" ("dumb son of a b*tch"); having my (and my co-workers) professionalism, ethics, intelligence, and pedigree questioned; and having my eardrums violated, I decided to call my boss and tell him there'd be NO way I'd be staying there any longer - but not before looking up the guy's cellphone number and anonymously posting it on an internet message board.

  And since it took me three weeks to train my replacement, I repeated this every time he got fed up with random people calling him day and night, and requested yet another new telephone number. 
• (#13) The Worst All-Inclusive Cruises

  From Redditor /u/ThePonzo:

  I worked in a call center for Bertelsmann, some sort of German mass media sh*t that sells crappy travel packages to Egypt or Turkey to seniors, including overpriced flights, hotels, and flight insurances.

  I used the name "Stromberg" (main guy on the German version of The Office) on the phone because one of those elderly c*nts found me in a phone book, and called me on my mobile phone at 9 pm spitting fire in my ear about the cancellation fee for his booked vacation. (He didn't book the travel cancellation insurance.)

  But that wasn't what made me [lose] it, it was those f*cking c*nts from Bertelsmann/Donauland not giving a sh*t where they send those elderly people. One woman called me after her vacation and told me about Egypt locals shooting at the cruise ship with rifles "for fun," and all Bertelsmann did was send the next pack of elderlies straight on the same cruise.

  Not to mention the poor quality on those cruises, tons of reports of elderlies having the sh*ts or getting sick.

  That's one of those flyers, still makes me angry.
• (#14) The Final Straw

  From Redditor /u/boysvfood:

  I worked an insurance call center, and this call was my final straw.

  Lady and her husband had split up a few years back. Well, they had a teenage daughter that, by rule and because she was a big liability, had to be listed on the policies of both parents, despite primarily residing with her mother. Well, she wasn't on both policies until she had a wreck in her dad's car. I guess it wasn't discussed that in the handling of the claim, the daughter was added to dad's account.

  A few years later, daughter calls to pay on her mom's account, but gives her own info. So it pulled up dad's account. She paid on that unknowingly.

  So I get the call from the frantic mom because her policy is gonna lapse, despite the fact that her daughter paid, just on the wrong bill. The highlight of this mom's ranting and raving was when she seemingly genuinely asked me, "Do you ever listen to yourself talk?"
• (#15) No Love For Floridians

  From Redditor /u/Eggmcmuffington:

  I've worked for call centers for the past few years. I'm working for a Canadian telecom giant right now as a retention agent, but a few years back I worked for a cable provider in their Tampa queue. I did billing, technical support, and sales... pretty much everything. Tech support was the worst.

  Let me tell you, Floridians must be the most entitled and nasty bunch of people in the continental United States. If they were too dumb to figure something out, it was of course due to my incompetence.

  Anyways, this older man called me up, started a relentless tirade of the incompetence of the company I worked for, finally ending in a string of insults of my intelligence and my inability to fix his issue. By this point, I hadn't spoken a word other than a greeting and my name.

  When they would have these outbursts, my trick was always to stay silent. Not put myself on mute, but stay completely silent so they knew I was there, but that I was not speaking to them. Once they were done, I'd drag that silence out for as long as I could before the inevitable, "Are you still there?" At that point I would calmly continue as if it had never happened - I refuse to validate the adult temper tantrum with a response.

  Anyways, after explaining his issue and insulting me more, I was audibly laughing on the phone, upsetting him more. Apparently our system was so bad because his TV kept saying, "DVD VIDEO INSERT DISK."

  I attempted to explain to him multiple times that this was not due to our system, but the fact that his TV was set to receive the input from his DVD player as opposed to his cable receiver, and he continued to berate me and call me stupid.

  We eventually resolved his issue, and at that point he continued to insult me for being stupid. My closing statement was, "Next time, I hope you get somebody too stupid to help you, might make it easier to work with somebody more on your level. Have a great day!"

  Luckily, quality NEVER pulled calls over a few minutes in length, so we could do whatever the hell we wanted.
• (#16) Big Winner

  From Redditor /u/OhBother:

  One time the guy sitting next to me was tricked into thinking he called a radio show and won tickets to some band.
• (#17) 'Bloody Foreigner'

  From Redditor u/superhajime:

  I once was called a "bloody foreigner" by a Scottish woman.

  I'm English.
• (#18) When You Agree With The Customer

  From Redditor u/monster_snow_goon:

  I worked student loan collections for two of the most miserable years of my life. I worked for a major bank. It was a very sh*tty bank. 

  Anyway, the overlords up high decided we needed to call people [who were] one day late on their loans. [And] 75% of the customers had already paid their loan online, but our dialing system didn't see that until the payment clears (three business days).

  Ever been in an argument with someone who you completely agreed with, but still had to defend the bullsh*t decisions made by idiots you will never meet face-to-face? This was my life everyday, every hour. After a particularly heated argument with some lady, I broke down crying and couldn't stop. I'm a big dude, but I just lost my sh*t completely. We're talking full-blown bawling with snot coming out and everything.

  My boss told me that even though I was her best rep, I needed to get out of this job before I go crazy. A few months later I got into another argument and said, "F*ck it," grabbed my small handful of possessions, and walked out. I've never quit a job like that, but I needed to be gone. Probably the best decision I've ever made.

  I took a lower-paying job, but now unfortunately I need more money, and the only places in my city that pay what I need and would hire me are call centers, so I'm actually about to make a terrible choice.
• (#19) Getting Emotional

  From Redditor /u/wargassm13:

  I lost it in an emotional way when I phoned up... to talk to a Mr. Smith and an elderly lady answered. I asked, "Can I speak to Mr. Smith please?"

  She replied with, "No, my dear, but I wish you could, my husband died last week. We were married 55 years."

  Oh, dear God, I choked up!

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