Everyday Stupidity

It is the stuff of nightmares, worthy of a Hitchcockian thriller of its very own. It is unrelenting, ruthless, and can strike without warning. There is no stopping it, no reasoning with it. It will overrun you, wear down your defenses, and eventually, it will destroy you. It is the stupidity of your fellow man, and it will make you question how we ever became the dominant species.

Believe me or don't, but the following list consists of questions, answers and comments, all 100% true, that are heard on the average of at least once per week, sometimes as often as everyday. They are so common that they must be isolated on a page by themselves, lest they overrun the other sections. My vocabulary is far, far too limited to devise new ways to express the Same Old Shit that is this list. Read, and weep that you are forever linked in the same genus and species as these morons.


It's alarming the number of calls that we place to cable technicians who are, conveniently, not home or have a busy line ... all night long. With this, while you can suspect that it's intentional, you can never be quite sure. Not so with those pillars of brightness who obviously have caller ID, and quickly grab the receiver and hang up on me. Tsk. Boys, please. All this does is TELL me that you're there at home. Now you're going to make me call you repeatedly, without pause, until you answer the phone. And of course, don't think about taking that phone off the hook, because if you make me go track down your area managers to report your hijinks, he's going to be every bit as pissed as you are that I'm making him work. So just do us all a favour - either answer the call like a man or ignore it when it rings and then ignore your pager beeps.


You know, when I'm a visitor at a hotel and I have a question about that hotel's operation, I call the front desk. I guess I'm alone in that bizarre practice, as an unsettling number of people will call into the cable company to find out a particular hotel's PPV procedures.


If you are a cable caller and you have decided that, since some of your channels are out, you simply must call the Cable Company and report it instead of watching something else, shouldn't you know what you are missing? Not so, apparently, for most callers complaining that a channel is out do not know what station it is or what show they are unable to watch on it. A frightening number of people think the most efficient way to place a call is to get us on the phone, THEN turn to channel 2 and, one at a time, check each channel and see if it's out. Right. Because, of course, the longer we stay on the phone with you, the faster your problem gets reported, right?


It seems as though 99.99% of the callers interested in a product on the radio have only caught the "tail end" of the radio show in question. I hereby propose that the "tail end" of a radio show be the only portion that is aired. Maybe the inflated prices of the items themselves could benefit from reduced costs.


Customers who try to scare or guilt you into selling something for cheaper than its price. If you hear about a product and its $100 price tag, and we confirm that when you call, don't act shocked at the high cost and try to guilt us into lowering it. It's oregano, it's not a used car, we're not here to barter with you. And don't think that we're intimidated that you can find it elsewhere for cheaper. If such is the case, then you should already be placing your order with them instead of wasting our time.


The above also applies to cable customers who, after being told repeatedly by us that we can do nothing but pass along a report of their outage, angrily exclaim that they're going to get a satellite dish. Go right ahead, that means I won't have to listen to you bitch anymore. For further amusement, they get increasingly upset that I respond to that threat with a semi-cheerful "Okay," instead of bursting into tears and begging them to reconsider.


I will never understand customers who refuse, to the point of rudeness, to give out their telephone number, but will toss their credit card number at you like they're playing a game of hot potato.


The following occurs for any given company. Let's say that a customer calls in at 3am on Sunday morning. Let's play a game. Spot all the ways in which this is the stupidest question one could possibly ask in this situation.


This one is as frustrating as it is idiotic. Customers will call in and give you all their information for whatever reason you wanted it. While doing so, they insist on spelling EVERYTHING. This includes their first name of "Jane" and the word "Street" in their address ... but not their city, which sounds something like "Lacing" and, you eventually discover, is spelled "Lacygne."


Zip codes are apparently legendary magical creatures that only some of us were blessed with. Those unlucky enough to have bought a house without one must embark on a quest to discover it, if they actually want their merchandise to arrive. Assuming, of course, that they've even actually HEARD of this mythical beast, being that the most common answer to a zip code request is "My what?"  The unlucky fool then becomes hostile when I either have no idea what the zip for Genericville USA is off the top of my head, or I refuse to accept their area code, phone number, apartment number, or even credit card number as a substitute.


Cable call. Would I be TELLING you that you'd need to speak to someone else if I could?  "Oh, golly, I must've gone temporarily insane, I'm sorry! I CAN suddenly warp the laws of time and space and fill your every need! How dense of me!"  The above exchange easily applies to any situation in which the caller must be referred to the office or another, not-me department. What's particularly amusing is when they don't believe me.  +50 fun points when they call right back asking the same questions and don't realize they're talking to me again.


The state used in the following is not limited to merely that state, but it has been my observation that an inordinately large amount of these individuals are, in fact, extremely stupid. One night, I tested the boundaries of a caller's inability to distinguish the word "city" from the word "state." I didn't find any. I kept repeating my question, even going to the point of explaining the difference between a city and state. The caller finally hung up the phone after telling me that I was a "stupid fucking bitch" for asking him a question that he'd already given me the answer to.


Much like the above, callers often like to give me their name, phone number, or even their zip code for their city. Some have even responded to my question by asking "What do you mean?"  Maybe it's my vocabulary that's messed up.


I worry for mothers-to-be who, when asked for their due date, feel the need to provide the year as well.  Even worse are the ones that have to take a second to remember it.


I firmly believe that people who don't know how to properly give their credit card number over the phone should not be allowed to have them. I understand that the last four numbers on a Visa card can be easily glossed over by the holographic sticker so an elderly individual might not realize that they're there, but there is no excuse for someone to say to me "And there are four more numbers" and then pause until I ask what they are.  JUST READ THEM! If they're there, on the same line, identical to the previous three groups of numbers, they're just as necessary.  And yes, the expiration date is important.


Why do people call a number to place an order for something they heard on the radio, and yet have no clue what it is that they're calling for? If I'm being nice, I can perhaps understand that you didn't catch the name of the product. You might even be a litle confused on what exactly the product in question does. But if I'm calling somewhere to spend anywhere from $100-$500 dollars on something, you had better damn well believe I'm going to know something about it.  And yet almost daily, creatures that sit atop the food chain will call in and say "Yeah, I want to order that thing they're talking about on the radio, my credit card number is..." but can't give me even the slightest clue as to what that two-hundred dollar "something" is. Then they get mad at me and call me stupid for not knowing what they're talking about.


This one is truly frightening. Some callers are utterly beside themselves that they dialed a local number and are now talking to me in another state. I don't even necessarily mean that they don't know about call forwarding or the other modern wonders that the phone company can provide, although this often is true. I mean they literally don't know how they can hear me from several states away. I guess they're still relying on the Pony Express to relay messages across that dangerous injun territory. One day I'm going to tell one of these people that I'm really in Russia or something and listen to their tiny mind sizzle.


If I'm trying to dial, say the Wok 'n Rok restaurant and the person on the other end of the phone answers with "Dr Bob's Gout Removal," then I know that something has gone wrong somewhere. I dialed a wrong number, a computer error occured, the family of the guy who died of food poisoning last week decided to press charges ... Something easily explained has happened. I apologize, hang up, and try again. If the same occurs, then I apologize once more, perhaps confirm the number that I'm dialing, and then leave the matter be and order a pizza. I do NOT do one of the following: I think that a test should be issued with each request for phone service, and that if you do not correctly respond with the way to handle yourself in simple social situations, then you'll just have to settle for two dixie cups and some string.


In much the same vein as the above, this occurs with alarming frequency. The local company name itself has been changed, but not the syllable count. You'll see what I mean. This can be fun, however, because not everybody asks, they just immediately launch into a tirade about their phone bill.  So I let them bitch at me for three or four minutes, and then tell them it's a wrong number.


But wait, there's more in the wrong number vein! Sometimes, after I finally get it through the caller's impossibly thick skull that they've dialed the wrong number, they actually ask me what number they were SUPPOSED to call.


A customer calls in specifically to ask for the address of the company. As I start to give it to them, they suddenly exclaim "Wait! Let me get a pen and paper!"  As to the ones that wait until I'm down to the city and state and THEN say they need to get something to write it down, fuck you.


Caller: "Can you answer a question?"   Me: "Well that would entirely depend upon what the question is."   Some people just don't understand my answer at all.


This is always one of my favourites. A caller, either just before or just after giving me their credit card number to purchase something, asks if the company that I'm answering for is legit.  I don't even bother to answer the question anymore, I just pose this to them: "If I wasn't, do you really think I'd have a serious moral dilemma in lying to you before ripping you off?"



There is more. So much more, that one's brain can only hold so much at a time for fear of the idiocy infecting your own thought patterns like a crippling, incurable disease. These are but the first things to enter into my mind, but every day brings another hateful reminder that I've been in this exact same situation countless times before. The only difference being that now I shall scribe them here for all to see.  Misery not only loves company, it bloody well pines for it.



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