People who drive me nuts, work-edition

The most cliched statement that you can make in a mean way about someone without swearing (cause God forbid your grandmother hears you say funny words), there are plenty of people who drive me nuts.

Me? I work in a call center. I do customer service. I really do put on a happy smile (because apparently callers hear smiles over the phone, which is crazy but I have to go by what the little scrolling board at work says), but sometimes that smile fades into oblivion.

Now, since work sent out an email that stated that blogging about the company is prohibited, I will keep everything vague. Do I sell perfume? Do I help people with their cable subscriptions? That my friend is a secret you'll sadly never know, unless you feel like sending me a few hundred bucks each week to take the place of a job that I don't hate.

Anyways, so sometimes we call references when we need to contact someone about their account. And sometimes, those references can be pretty angry. We'll call the man Bob. Bob didn't like the fact that we called him apparently. And when asked if he knew of a way to contact the person, he got a little feisty.

"Well what's the phone number you have on file?" Bob asks. I replied politely that I was unable to give out that information, as it is sensitive information.

"I don't appreciate the way you are speaking to me, if you can't give me that information, why should I help you?" he yells as he hangs up. God forbid he ever comes into contact with an ugly thing in this world called identity theft. I'm not neighbors with the guy, I don't know what kind of person he is. Maybe he's a huge creep.

I like to think that whoever that person on the account is, they are thankful that I'm not willy-nilly giving away their phone numbers to crazy people.

Sometimes people can be nice though. After assisting someone with payment arrangements earlier this week, she said, "Don't ever think what you do is meaningless. You really helped me today."

That made my day! That made me smile from ear to ear. To think that a job that I do day in and day out actually helped someone is a fun thought. Life is more fun when you are appreciated.

It's the mean people, however, who stick out in your mind more than the nice people. And I can't figure out why. Both people had crazy effects on my mindset. Once made me feel good about what I do each day. The other forced me to go into break for a minute or two to regain my composure. Yet when I decided to do a blog post about work, the angry guy is what stuck out in my mind.

Perhaps that is something I need to work on. Being thankful for the happy people in my life, instead of dwelling on the negative. I'm sure I'll improve on that someday. But here's a tip for you people when you call customer service in the future.

Be nice to us. We don't ALL hate you. Only when you demand unreasonable things.