5 Types of Callers - Things That Annoy Me Thursday

I work at a call center (it’s just as glamorous as you think!) and I take anywhere between 15-30 calls a day. You can imagine that I get to talk to many different personalities during the day so I thought I would share with you the different types of callers that we see daily.

1.      Know It All’s: You know these people. We’ve all met them. In my case they tend to be the people who call, presumably because they need help or have a question, but then start telling ME what’s the situation is as though they were teaching me. They don’t let you talk or help them. You tend to have to cut them off so that you can get a word in and actually help them. Which leads to the asshole callers…

2.      Assholes: Not long after I started working, when I was still raw and not completely sure of what I was doing I got a call from a lady who was not happy (but very few are). She was talking to me about her problem and I was trying to help her and telling her that I was going to send a message to the proper person. When I told her to give me a moment to write she said “you aren't done?” I told her that I was waiting for us to stop talking to write it and her reply was “what? You can’t walk and chew gum at the same time”. That is the worst one I've had, but luckily we are able to hang up on callers (After warning them) if they are rude to us.

3.      Repeaters: These are the people who will repeat themselves over and over. They will tell you their story many times even though you've already resolved their issue. I will listen to them, I will fix the problem and I will tell them what I did, and then they will say something like “okay because (repeat problem here)”. These are some of the worst and you definitely have to interrupt them or you will be on the phone forever.

4.      Entitled: Oh, goodness. These I think are just as bad as the assholes. These people feel like they are entitled to the services we provide. They are not grateful for what we give them, but instead think that it is their God given right to them and heaven forbid they don’t get them on time. You can hear them saying: “I want to know where MY benefits are and when are YOU going to give them to ME?” Which leads me to…

5.      Grateful: These are the ones I like the most. They are so thankful for getting the benefits we provide. They continuously say thank you or God bless you. They tend to ask for a supervisor to let them know what a good job you are doing. They acknowledge that they are being helped and sometimes seem to feel ashamed or embarrassed for needing the help. 

I take Spanish calls and 95% of the time my callers fall into the grateful category. A grateful caller can also be a repeater, though. They sometimes are Know-it-All’s, but not generally.

Things That Annoy Me Thursday

I'm joining Amber at Airing My Dirty Laundry for this lovely topic today! 

I had written a post for last week, and then I re-thought it because a) it was too detailed and in case anyone in my “real” life reads this from work I may have gotten in trouble and b) I wanted to add to it.

The basic gist of what was really annoying me all of last week was a situation at work. I won’t describe the situation, however I will say this:

/start rant:

I do not understand some people. Unless they actually suffer from a mental illness, and I think this one person may, I just don’t get it. One moment this person is my best friend and she stops in my cubicle to chat and we give each other advise, etc. etc. THEN the next she wants NOTHING to do with me. This is what happened over the past month. When she gets into the hating me mood I just ignore her. She doesn’t add anything to my life to make me waste time worrying about. But then she does some things that seem aimed at me and I get annoyed.

Maybe I am overreacting and I shouldn’t let that get to me, but sometimes I can’t help it.

That same day that I wrote the post (Wednesday of last week) she decided that the hating me part of the moment was over and she was going to be my friend again – and so that helped in me wanting to hold back on the post.

I just don’t get it.

That same evening Thomas and I (in separate cars) met up with his parents for dinner. On my way home I was driving behind two exceptionally slow drivers. I was able to get around one but not the other, so I was stuck behind the car at a left turning arrow. And I mean stuck.

She didn’t pull up to the crosswalk line so it didn’t trigger the arrow to turn green. Writing about it, it doesn’t seem that big of an issue – but I wanted to be home! I honked at the car and she pulled up just half a car length, but luckily far enough that she triggered the light to change the next time.

Why do people not pull up to the line? Do they not know that there are sensors under the ground that let the lights know you are there?

Okay…. /end rant.

Things That Annoy Me

My husband would say that everything bothers me and I make a big deal out of everything. I don’t agree with him, I think I’m just passionate about many things and have strong feelings and opinions about them. There are some things that are currently annoying me, though, so I thought I would share. 

• I, along with all my co-workers, get so incredibly annoyed when the systems at work don’t work. They’ve gotten better since I began working here 18 months ago, but some days they are so slow that it makes our job very difficult if not impossible. 

• Sometimes the Bloglovin’ app on my phone resets itself while I’m reading someone’s post. It’ll reset to “loading” or tell me I don’t have any unread posts – which never happens. I’m sure this only due to the shitty data collection I get at work from T-Mobile. 

• Which leads to the next point: I hate T-Mobile. I switched from Verizon a few years ago because I needed something less expensive and my brother (who has been with them for 10 years) didn’t have any problems. For most of the time I didn’t have any trouble, but the last 18 months have made me grind my teeth. For some reason the only company that has decent service in our work building is Verizon. T-Mobile (for myself and all my co-workers) provides barely any data service. I can text and make phone calls, but when it comes to the internet? Sucks. Only 3 months left on my contract. Update! On July 5th Thomas and I went out and bought ourselves the GS5 on Verizon! Woohoo! Post to come with a review!

• Which leads to this point: My phone is starting to show its age. I am ready for a new one that is faster and doesn’t freeze. My mouth waters at seeing the GS5. Three more months, that’s it! 

• There are certain people around me that like to act like they know everything and that they can never be wrong. This leads them to never ask questions or to clarify new rules and regulations. This translates in them giving false information to our participants. Their attitude annoys me and as much as I try to ignore hearing what they say… it is very difficult when they are very loud. Also? I don’t understand how a person can ask questions and say things that I would also ask and say but in a way that pisses everyone off? Nine out of ten participants get upset at this person and either yell at them, ask for a supervisor… it’s horrible.

• I’m also annoyed that although we’ve been married for more than 2 months (wow, totally skipped out remembering it was our 2 month anniversary) we still don’t have our marriage certificate (when writing marriage on paper I misspelled it 3 times!). Apparently the pastor forgot to write the county, city, and date of our marriage. The Country Recorder tried to contact us to fix it, but they had Thomas’ phone number and he couldn’t be reached in Argentina. The day we got back the certificate was back in our mail for us to finish filling out and return to them, which I did the next day. It’s been 3 weeks. Let’s cross our fingers!

• It also annoys me that my hand writing sucks. Look at the following for example. I was writing my ideas down during work and everything is completely different! 

• The lack of organization at my house also irks me. Why can’t everything just find a place to live and get there on its own? Why do I have to unpack everything and make it look pretty? 

• When I lived with my parents my parents subsidized my Arrowhead bottled water drinkage. Now, in order to save some money, Thomas and I just use the water from the fridge. I bought some nice glass, BPA free water bottles from Costco to bring to work. For some reason it seems like that water does not stay as cold as the water in bottles did. This means I don’t drink a lot of water anymore. 

• It’s also annoying that the World Cup games I want to watch aren’t all on weekends so I don’t have to worry about getting in trouble at work for being off the phone. However, it is nice to be able to watch portions of the game along with co-workers. I saw the 2^nd US Goal along with a dozen co-workers. We had to be shushed we yelled so loudly.

• Although I am used to this, it is still annoying that the doctor’s cannot find anything that makes my rib pain any better. I hate having to take so many medications and STILL be in pain. 

• I have whole little thing that I have to say when I answer the phone at work. It ends with me asking them a yes or no question. Most of the time they don’t answer the question. They ask me a question, they tell me what they want, they ask for their worker. It annoys me to no end. It just boggles me that people can’t seem to understand my simple yes or no question. 

Okay, 12 is a good number to stop at. I’ve vented enough. Next will the post about things that brighten my days!