Week 11
Week 12
Week 13
Week 14
Week 15
Week 16
Week 17
Week 18
Week 19
Week 20

Weeks 21-30
Weeks 31-40
Weeks 41-50
Weeks 51-60
Weeks 61-present

Week Twelve - Friday, 9th June
Cable service, like telephones, should require an intelligence test to acquire. That way, all the people too stupid to qualify for it could be out becoming smarter or getting killed, either or. If we were to take a survey of those people who called about cable problems, most likely one quarter would actually grasp how cable worked correctly, a remaining quarter would think the cable company cast magic spells on their televisions, another quarter would think cable wires on the highway were for decorations, and the remainder of the people would think that small gnomes living in their cable box got lazy from time to time and had to be whipped by the cable techs. This week's winner may not subscribe to any of the above theories, but nor did he have any grasp of how cable actually works, either...

A cable customer in Florida called to report his cable out. Partway through, he broke into a tirade about a completely unrelated time his cable was out and techs dared to come over to his house to fix it. I suggested that if he not want his service repaired to not call it in, otherwise I would make a report. "That's what I'm calling for! I want you to make a report!!" Rolling my eyes, I proceeded to gather the info. Afterwards, the caller again stated that he didn't want anybody to come out to his house. Ever. He claimed to be certain that it was an area-wide problem, even when I told him that we'd received no other reports all night long. "Look, just write down that I don't want anyone coming out. Just grab your pen and write it down. Can you handle that?"  "No, sir, I'm afraid we've joined the technological age and now use something called 'a computer', but I'll TYPE a mention of it."

Week Thirteen - Sunday 18 & Tuesday 20, June
A first for FotW, a fuck who excelled so far in his fuckage that they spanned multiple days! It's difficult to know exactly how to introduce this company in any way that is not expressed within the context of the reports themselves, suffice it to say that it takes an awful lot to make us this taken aback, jaded as we are.

I'm really at a loss to fully describe this one, so bear with me as I work through my combined rage and dumbfoundedness. I've mentioned a towing company we answer for in the past. I feel those reports were a good lead-up to tonight's sitaution. Follow along with me.

Now, near as I can fathom it, a towing company serves a very exact and specified niche, that being to tow cars. On this fine Sunday night, there appears to be many who could use this service. Poor things, they chose this company.

We have very specific details on how to dispatch things for this account (and, indeed, most accounts). First we call the on-call's cell. Then we page the on-call. Then we try the backup. Then the owner. No luck on any front, with the exception of the backup's cell phone. That one picks up just fine. But nobody will answer. Oh, I can hear rustling. I can hear somebody in the background quite clearly. At one point, I even got him to say the world "No." But beyond that? Utter silence. Of course, now the calls start piling up, the customers are starting to get angry, and still nobody will respond. I've heard of some extremeley unprofessional things in my time, but this has to take the cake.

UPDATE: Our silent towing friend finally checks in! Apparently, his cell phone wasn't working properly. Of course not. That fully explains why it took you an hour to check in with the answering service, since I'm sure you have no other phones in your house and you couldn't just call your office's number and be automatically sent to us. Makes perfect sense. As for the on-call's cell not working, he claimed that it had been stolen so they had disconnected the number. As expected, no answer was forthcoming as to why the pager went unanswered or why nobody had bothered to call the answering service and let them know how to get in contact with them. Golly, they're superific! Let me note down their name and number to call next time I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere at 2am!

Guess who still sucks? The towing company from earlier this week has not improved over the last few days. Around 7:15pm, I received a call from a man wondering the ETA for the call his insurance company had placed an hour before. Checking the delivered messages, I could see no record of the call, so, assuming the office had taken it before they closed, I called the on-call's cell. He said that he was busy and to call the backup. I did so, and lo and behold, there was again no answer. Though I could hear plenty of singing. I tried again, this time with a response. He claimed he'd never received a call for the customer and demanded to know how the man expected him to go out on a call he'd never received, concluding our pleasant chat by telling me to call the man back and tell him he had the wrong company and hanging up. Grumbling, I did so, recommending the customer to call back his insurance company to confirm who they had contacted. Usually out of sight is out of mind for calls, but as I was still irritated with this company, I went back and took a look. What do you know, I DID find the first call for the man, coming in about 6pm. The on-call was contacted and he said he would call back for the information in 30 minutes. The backup was also contacted and he said he'd check back by 7pm for it. Both failed utterly in these seemingly simple tasks. Way to run a company. I don't expect to have to put up with their incompetance for much longer, however. Their business practices will do them in quite well.

Week Fourteen - Sunday, 25th June
Not all Fucks of the Week have to enrage or even annoy us. Sometimes someone comes along who is just so completely stupid or out of touch with reality that they deserve an extra special mention here, especially with short entries that might otherwise be overlooked. Such is the case with this week's winner. Read on, and laugh with us.

A caller to our health products company tried to make small talk discussing politics. Sadly, he was a little out of touch: "Come on, you've gotta vote Bush, we can't re-elect that Clinton guy. We gave him one shot already and he blew it." Later, as I asked for his address, he responded, "Do you have to have that to send this to me?" I was too stunned to say anything other than "Yes. I do."

Week Fifteen - Saturday, 1st July
There's something perpetually irritating about people who try to threaten or cajole you into getting what they want. This man is a perfect example of that. His entire town was without cable, but that didn't matter. There were severe thunder and lightning storms in his area, but that didn't matter. The tech had been working for approximately 5 hours straight, but that didn't matter either. The only thing that mattered was the Matlock Marathon he was missing out on. Oh, and getting my address. I really wanted to ask him just what he'd do with it once he got it, but was laughing too hard.

A man in Mississippi called in (as many Mississippians did tonight) to report his cable out. I told him the same thing I'd told 100 or so people tonight, that the tech was out working on the outage and we had no estimated time of restoration. Unlike the previous 100, however, this was not enough and he began ranting about how his cable had been out for the past two hours. I listened for a few minutes and then said "The technician is working on the outage, sir. What else would you have him do?" He had no answer to that one, but he had plenty more to say about the matter, although I have little idea what about. The best I could gather was that he was trying to make some sort of correlation between the cable being out and being $1.00 short on his bill. Of course, while he's babbling, calls are backing up, so I tried to sum it up for him: "Sir, being $1.00 short and your cable being out are two unrelated events. As I said, the tech is aware of the outage and is working on it now. He'll have it back up as soon as possible." No such luck, sadly, as he fixated on me instead. "Unrelated? Did you say they are unrelated?" "Yes, I did." He repeated his question. I refused to repeat my answer. "What is your name?" I gave it, and spelled it for him. "And where do you live? What is your address?" That one really got me, and with a laugh I told him he was not privy to that little tidbit of info. "Okay, fine, I'll get it from the office tomorrow." "Sure you will, sir," I replied, still laughing as he hung up.

Week Sixteen - No Winner
Kinda hard to pick a Fuck of the Week when you're on a fuck-free vacation. And a well-deserved one at that. Tune back in next week for more of the same boggling stupidity.

Week Seventeen - Monday, 17 July
This guy was a winner (loser?) in so many ways it was almost frightening. It's amusing now, but I was getting so frustrated with this man that I almost had a nosebleed before the conversation was over. I mean really ... why the hell would you even WANT a John Denver VCR?

I can't quite decide if it's sad or amusing how badly some folks are out of the technological loop. Tonight I was harassed for five to ten minutes by a man in Texas calling into a pledge line for, of all things, John Denver items. Initially, the man thought that his $180 pledge would net him a VCR. Further discussion revealed that even if such were the case, he wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do with it. Instead, however, I made the mistake of actually trying to enlighten the man: "No, you receive a CD and a VHS tape, not a VCR ... Right, you play it on your VCR. No, not the CD, the video tape. No, they're not the same thing. The CD you listen to -- no, there is a definite difference between a compact disc and an audio tape -- The video you watch. On your TV, right. No, put the VHS tape in the VCR and watch it on your TV. Yes, you would need a TV." At least five minutes of this shit. Finally, the man decided to leave me in some deranged state of peace. And, of course, as predicted, he pledged absolutely nothing.

Week Eighteen - Sunday, 23 July
Ahh, repeat callers. They can often be both the highlight and the downfall of an evening, depending upon your perspective. From the standpoint of having good OSB material, they rarely get any better, but that's sometimes cold comfort next to living through the cretin. I won't even pretend to understand where these people are coming from. In my world, when I need something from somebody, I call and answer their questions and quickly and accurately as possible. I mean, I wouldn't call them up for a chat, I need them to perform a specific function and understand that to do so, they require some cooperation from me. Guys like this seem to believe that we live in Magical Pixie-Wixie Land where all their needs and desires are filled by their just thinking about it. Which would be neat, but just isn't going to happen, and manages to ultimately do nothing but cause frustration for all parties. But I digress. I believe Mike summed this man up best while on the phone with him: "Better people than you have tried [to irritate us by calling repeatedly], sir."

What inherant part of humans demands that they become slathering demons obsessed with a niggling little detail? Last night I dealt with this freak, but he irritated me to the extent that I could find no humourous way to portray his exploits. Tonight, however, I find myself able to mock him with abandon. As indicated from previous calls, the first thing required from cable customers is their city. That should make logical sense, so I won't insult those at the head of the class by explaining it. This should be a very simple, clear-cut question, which is part of why it's so unbelievably frustrating when it isn't. This man in particular took irritatingly obnoxious behaviour to the next level. EVERY SINGLE QUESTION I asked him last night required 3-5 minutes of preemptive debate. Eventually, quite sick of him, I told him that if he couldn't answer my next question directly, I would hang up on him. He didn't. Thankfully, that was the end of him that night, but he's apparently come back with a vegeance tonight. Not that I allowed him to get far enough to piss me off this time. He immediately answered my query of "Which city are you calling for?" with "I already told you!" ... so I hung up on him. I did the next time he called with that answer. And the next. And the next. About the fifth call, I just started putting him on hold (a fate worse than death with that music). As anticipated, he didn't hang on long. We played that game a few more times before I wrote down his phone number from caller ID and stopped acknowledging him altogether. Nikki don't play. Mike, on the other hand, always loves toying with the weak-minded ...

Did Nikki mention that he was rude? He swore like it was going out of style and used "shit" like he got royalties on the word. Over the course of several calls, he continually attempted to argue with me, whether about what my job duties were, about what the techs would do, or anything else. He continually lost these arguments as well. (It's easy to argue with someone who usually counters with "That's bullshit.") At one point, he tried to argue with me about what his name, address and phone number were, despite giving me this information in a previous call, and the caller ID system verifying his number for me. After it became apparent to him that he was completely outclassed (and again I stress this was not difficult), he decided to simply hurl insults. "You guys are so full of it. You are a crappy answering machine. All you do is give messages!" Sadly, this is a direct quote. He later said that I should be out there fixing the cable instead of taking calls. When even pathetic insults failed, he condemned himself as only the most sad can, by vowing to call all night long and torment us. Most pathetic of all, he didn't even call back.

Week Nineteen - Saturday, 29 July
This week's award winner is short, but very sweetly stupid. This is the kind of clueless idiot that is lacking even the base common sense given to a toaster oven. If his video tapes had survived, he would've invited his neighbors over and held them hostage for the next 8 hours watching every detail of his mind numbingly dull vacation. And thought he was giving them a treat. For their sake, I'm glad he's this stupid.

A caller to our health services company complained that his magnetic mattress pad was defective and demanded a replacement. He was quite agitated at this shoddy craftsmanship. It turns out he had used the pad to pack out a suitcase, including video tapes he had taken on vacation. Can you guess how this gentleman's mattress pad "malfunctioned"?

Week Twenty - Saturday, 5 August
You can't beat people like this. The don't listen, they don't comprehend, and they're so violently angry with you that you have little doubt they would gleefully stab your face repeatedly with a butter knife if you were in front of them. What else can you do but antagonize them further?

This one actually had me laughing so hard I was incapacitated for a few moments. A woman in Louisiana called, wanting to know what happened to the British comedies normally shown on the station at that time. That was what she said boiled down to, anyway. What she actually said was something along the lines of "WHERE THE HELL ARE THE FUCKING BRITISH COMEDIES! I WANT THE BRITISH COMEDIES!" To be honest, I can't remember exactly what she said, but I know she said it very loudly, quite literally screaming at me down the phone line. I was struck with the mental image of this demon-woman, holding the phone in front of her and letting rip for all she was worth. "I'm sorry, I have no information regarding the station's programming," I calmly told her. "Would you like to make a pledge?" She hung up, but instantly called back, getting me again. She was presenting her displeasure in the same way, and sadly, my headset chose to short out partway through, so I didn't get to hear exactly what she said (it is a testament to her lung power, however, that I could still hear her yelling, though the volume was almost non-existant). What I did manage to hear from her is pretty much summed up by the statement "So if we wanted to watch British comedies, we're shit out of luck." Of course, it took her screaming for 30-45 seconds to get that. With my headset back online and the crux of her tirade in mind, I cheerfully said "That's right! Would you like to make a pledge?" She screamed "NO, STUPID!" with such venom that I honestly believe she felt she had just put me in my place and I was so shattered that I'd never recover. Oh, how I laughed.