Youtube Video: The Angry Customer

I work at a call center for an undisclosed company.  Every day I talk to many, many happy and satisfied customers who had something go wrong and they want it rectified.  Also, every day I talk to at least one person who is angry as hell and doesn't mind yelling and calling me names.  I talk to completely unreasonable and frustrated callers all the time.  I realized pretty quickly into my job that the difference between a pleasant caller and an enraged caller is not the issue at hand.  It's not failure in service that really provokes the caller, it's something else.  And it's easy to forget that and understand the caller out of context.    Doing so makes you, likewise, angry and frustrated.  The same goes for the other way around - the caller so easily understands the rep out of context.  Just as it's easy to forget that the person calling has (potentially) money problems, relationship issues, child rearing issues, psychological disorders, differing educational levels, varying egos and perspectives on life, so too is it easy to forget that a customer service rep is working within a structure they didn't create and don't have creative control of.  In the end, it's one big jumbled mess, and people take it out on the phones they squeeze with varying levels of force.  In the end, nobody knows who they talked to and nobody cares, and the life of retail stumbles on.

This is a song from the perspective of an old man who has very little, if anything, to live for.  His only source of joy is the things he buys online and waits for in the mail.  Well, what of his pain when that thing doesn't arrive?  He searches the web for a phone number nearly impossible to find, and he calls to yell at someone.  And that's the dance of call center customer service.  For more on customer service, click here.

I sit alone at home, you don’t know what it’s like

Before you judge me, try it on for size

No one to call you when you are feeling bored,

No one to pick you up when you hit the floor

All my happiness comes in the things I buy

I search the internet for something that’s worth while

And I wait, I wait

For it today, Yeah

In the afternoon I grab my mail key

And go outside to see what awaits me yeah

I look in and what the hell do I see

There ain’t nothing looking back at me 

What the hell?  I yell!

I get so mad, yeah

I search the internet for a phone number to call

And tell those ass holes I hope they trip and fall

I search and search while the hours role by

It’s the only thing gives me the will to be alive

“Hello good neighbor, we care about your call”

But if he did care, he’d bang his head against a wall

A cuss and swear, Go to hell!

He don’t understand, yeah

He tries to tell me it should be there tomorrow

But I don’t care and my insults he swallows

I take the pain pounding in my chest

And let it out with total unrest

His kindness kills me, I’d rather a fist fight

And if he’d bloody win, at least he’d prove he’s right

I call him names, as I don’t know his name

I cast the blame, yeah!

Meanwhile the sun it sets in the east

And my poor neighbor, he’s just trying to eat

Meanwhile the breeze it’s blowing in the north

But old man don’t see it, no he don’t see it