This was new. A woman in Tennessee called in and preempted her question to me with "I know you won't know the answer to this, but..." Do people get off on wasting the time of everybody involved in a situation? (10:45pm)
A caller to our health products company asked if the multivitamin products would world miracles. No word manipulations, flat out asked "Will it work miracles?" I almost asked what kind of miracle she needed from a small pill, but simply said "No." She chose not to buy it. (4:30am)
A woman in Pennsylvania called in saying that she had digital cable installed today and was reading through the instruction manual. "It tells me not to plug my TV into a wall with a light switch," she said. "Okay," I replied, "and what's your question?" "I have a TV that plugs into a wall with a light switch. What should I do?" I blinked. "Well, I'd not plug it there then." At this, she became quite hyper. "But it's impossible to move!!" she exclaimed, as though I could make the instruction manual stop saying these horrible things because she was too lazy to either rearrange her living room or run an extention cord. "Ma'am, you asked me for my suggestion, so I gave it. I'm not going to debate it with you." Quite disgusted, she hung up. (5:08am)
Another caller to the health products company. The product of choice this time was the magnetic mattress pad. "Will it pull all the toxins out of my body?" she asked. "It would have to pull them through your skin, ma'am," I informed her. There was a pause, and then she brilliantly stated, "Ohhhhhh. Well, what about the evil spirits then?" I held back my comments about high-iron diets in evil spirits and just told her no. Disillusioned with her prospective pad, she said she would discuss it with her son and hung up. (5:23am)
A pledge caller asked how the pledge system worked. After I explained it to her, I asked how much she wanted to pledge. Somehow surprised by my question, she embarrassedly stated, "I shouldn't have phones," and hung up. (11:25pm)
A man in Kansas called to report his cable out. Since November. Yes, he had been without cable for the past five months. No, he had not called it in before. Why? He said he'd spent all this time searching for the phone number. (1:07am)
I stand, or sit rather, flabbergasted before you. A few weeks back we reported a new company account which had a name which made me think of proud parents with bumper stickers, but all other account information referred to office equipment. I mocked how our company set up "My children r rox". Tonight, I found out the awful truth. Our company set up the account right. This information provided by the company in question tells us to say these things and throw callers a supreme curve ball. I can tell you that this is the most inappropriate company name since a drywall construction company called itself "Poopy Doopies". I literally boggle, stunned at this stupidity. (3:28am)
In the midst of a pledge drive rush, an elderly woman called in. She stated that although she could not contribute, she desperately wanted to hear her name on the television. Calling, as she put it, from her death bed with breast cancer, she gave every indication that her soon-to-be-over life would be complete if she could have her name read on public television during a Lawrence Welk drive. Regardless of whether or not I was capable of passing that wish along, this was just sad. A goal like this goes up there next to "met someone who met someone famous" or "made a collection of beavers out of Play-Dough". I mean, I feel bad for anyone suffering from such an affliction, but go out with dignity, not begging to be acknowledged by PBS. (7:55pm)
A man called into a pledge line, although I've no idea why. After a few minutes of mumbling about how his wife liked apples and he'd just bought a new trailer, he fell silent and then hung up. (12:55am)
A man called in from New York regarding his aunt who had cable in Florida. It turns out that his aunt used to live with his mother, who is now deceased. The cable to the house was never disconnected, so now the man is accusing his aunt of getting free cable. "I want to turn her in for fraud," he told me. "You want to turn in your aunt -- your deceased mother's sister -- for cable fraud." "Yeah." I pointed him to the office with their daytime hours, but was still caught off-guard by the pettiness. Said Nikki rather accurately of the call, "That was pretty suckalicious." (2:28am)
Boy, there's nothing quite so wind-sucking as a munchkin swearing at you. A child (or an extremely disturbing adult) called into a pledge line trying to order something. This is pretty typical in our line of work ... children who have only the TV to turn to dialing any number that happens to appear on the screen. But when they start interfering with your work, something's gotta stop. So I made the effort to discourage the innocent little tyke from bothering us. The reward for my trouble was a stream of profanity naughty enough to make Andrew Dice Clay give pause. I'm guessing that PBS wasn't the usual babysitting channel of choice for this Lollipop Kid. (10:38pm)
A cable caller in Illinois said his upper channels were out. He didn't actually know which channels they were, so like the average idiot, he had to check each one while I was on the line. But it takes a special kind of idiot to lose count of the channels while reading them off the box. "Uhh, let's see... Channel 3, 4, 12... Wait, I lost count." (9:07pm)
A caller to one of the ministries we answer for (which offers a free bar of annointed soap--a ripoff, really, but that's another story), asked how much the free soap cost. When I told her it didn't cost anything, being free and all, she said she would have to think about it and call us back. Gee, a little untrusting of your minister? (10:07pm)
A man called into one of the many pledge lines to make a donation for $120. He wanted to pay it in monthly installments. "But I don't really want the magazine subscription," he said. I told him that wouldn't be a problem, as that was in incentive for pledgeing all at once on a credit card, so it wasn't available to those being billed in installments. "Oh, well, I'll pay on a credit card then," he inexplicably announced, changing his plans to recieve a magazine subscription he didn't want. (1:08am)
Quite poissibly the strangest pledge call I'll receive, a woman called in to pledge $150 for some music CDs. She had to whisper because she was in the bathroom hiding from her husband, who would kill her if he caught her calling the pledge line. She assured me she could afford it because she had just come into $53,000, but her husband would kill her anyway. Oh, and she didn't know what she was calling to pledge for. I'm guessing it was the fear of her husband that addled her wits so. Oh, definitely. (2:08am)
A shining example of just how stupid one man can be. He could not comprehend that the size of a king-size mattress pad was "king-sized", didn't believe me when I said that the twin-size was smaller, despite his understanding that the king-size was $100 more expensive, and when asked which credit card he wanted to use, responded with "C.O.D. or credit card?", as though he had any other option offered to him at any point in the conversation. (5:21am)
A woman called into the health products company to inquire about the magnetic mattress pad. Specifically, she wanted to know if it could only be used with certain kinds of sheets. "Well, unless you're using lead sheets ma'am ... " Honestly, where do people come up with this stuff? (7:16pm)
I didn't ask about this, although I should have. A woman called her cable company complaining of poor reception. At the end of the call, she asked if she had to be home for the tech to fix her problem. "Because I can't be here! I work 24/7!" So you work every hour of every day, every single week. How exactly did you discover this problem again? Perhaps more importantly, why are you paying for it? (9:50pm)
I should do this more often.
An elderly man calling from a nursing home wanted to pledge to receive a book the station featured...on love making. That's fine, if someone wants to pledge for any item, it's their business. Then he attempted to guilt me into giving it to him for free because he had no money and was trying to get a woman. Good god, man. The first lesson in the book is probably "Be young, not a 70-year old nursing home inmate." How desperate can you be for a book of this sort when you're probably surrounded by woman who are more charmed with a box of prunes than your mad sexual prowess? (12:53am)
The pledge drives never end, but they do sometimes get stupidier:
A man in Louisiana, when asked to spell his last name, had to write it down in order to give it to me correctly. This in and of itself is grounds for being written up, but he had the nerve to become angry with me because I couldn't just spell it myself. (9:55pm)
A caller to our health services company insisted on ordering the components of the orgegano kit (two bottles of capsules and one of oil) separately. The cost? $90. Versus the $90 price tag of the kit. I put him down for the kit anyway. He'll just have to deal with the demons/bad karma/whatever about it that was scaring him. (8:15pm)
A pledge caller wanted to receive a membership card from the station which entitled her to two-for-one meals at various restaurants until the end of 2001. Even after I explained this to her, she still wanted to pay off the item using monthly payments over the course of a year, meaning that she wouldn't receive the card in question until at least April of 2002. (10:03pm)
If you're going to make prank pledge calls, at least be creative and give us a laugh. I wish more people would do that, like the Pennsylvania caller who wanted to pledge to "that show where the naked robots run around and fight each other with pool sticks". He said it was his favorite show. When I asked what his favorite show was called, he laughed and hung up. (1:26am)
I adore repeat callers. Like this guy in Florida, who was having trouble with his phone. (Point of interest, we've been handling calls for this cable account for about two years now, and this was the first call for their telephone service we've gotten in that time. We were taken aback by his claims that the cable company did his phone too, and were sure he had the wrong number. So either their phone service is impeccible [difficult to believe , given the quality of their cable], or this guy is their lone phone customer.) Anyway, the guy was quite British indeed - usually a tranquilizing affect on my nervous system, except when they sound like they were born and bred in Buckingham Palace. A self-important, slimy, stuck-up ponce, I can do without in my day, particularly one in Florida. But I digress. So he calls back for the fourth time in ten minutes, demanding to know what's going on with his phone ("What is the prognosis?" "You're brain dead, sir. Did you want to ask about your phone now?") I told him we'd notified the on-call tech of the problem, which was all we could do. (Note that this is the same cable company who tells us that 100 calls doesn't constitute an "outage", so I was inwardly tickled that this guy was SoL.) He didn't like that. They never do.
Just when you thought people couldn't get weirder I had a call from a pledger in California who I'm fairly well convinced was quite serious. He couldn't seem to stop raving, "I don't want to talk on the phone! I DON'T WANT TO TALK ON THE PHONE!!" So don't use the fucking phone, you lunatic. It's fairly easy to avoid phone usage. (1:47am)
A man called into the health products company to order a magnetic mattress pad, but didn't know his zip code. His reasoning for this was "I'm blind!" (7:24pm)
My, what a rare treat. Tonight I fielded a call for our local public television station from the govenor of our fine state. In a move which I think sums up everything that I think of this place better than I could ever hope to express it, when asked for his address our esteemed head of state replied "Uhh ... I don't know" and had me just send it to "the governor's mansion". (9:51pm)
A caller to an automated voice mail system for a multi-layer marketing company left his name as his phone number. This sounds like an easy mistake, but even most idiots would have the work hard to leave a message saying, "My phone number is John W. Smith." (10:25pm)
A caller to the health products company wanted a free brochure. I told him the usual explanation, that you have to send an SASE to their address. He balked, as they so often do, confirming that they just want something for nothing. But balking was not enough for him, no. He went on to me at length about how his grandchildren would be putting his "intellectual property" on the Internet and how he would be rich very very soon, being able to buy Christmas gifts in advance (what?). He also went on to state that only then would he buy anything from this "stupid company". That's the way to show them -- come back with more money to buy more items than you would have in the first place. Just the kind of logic to expect from anyone thinking that putting "intellectual property" in a public domain would make them rich. (11:55pm)
A caller to the health products company wanted to order the magnetic mattress pad, but not before launching into a speech on the wonders of God, a being who apparently inflicts stress, alcoholism and various pains upon followers such as she, then expects them to go ut and buy a mattress pad for salvation. No, this was not her complaint, just my own observation as she told me to pray for better things and that I would be "blessed for [my] work." Sorry, I'm not God's personal order taker. I'd probably get paid a lot more if I was. (5:01am)
It's good that we can rely on Hollywood to bring out the best in people. Yes, it's Oscar night, as hundreds of pissed-off Floridians screamed at me. People seem to feel that the Academy Awards is the be all and end all of their existance. I've lost count of the number that have exclaimed "But it's OSCAR NIGHT!!" amidst a stream of violent cursing. Even little old ladies, someone's grandma, called me all manner of names, ranging from "bitch" all the way up to "fucking cunt". Yes, point of interest, this is the same location that the first FotW heralded from. You know, the one fixated on calling the operator a "stupid fucking cunt" as well. Maybe this is his mother. Regular freaking about cable being out is bad enough, but to be worked into foaming, bulging-eyed abusive madness over the absence of a meaningless awards show has got to transcend all kinds of dignity.
What is it about people's fixation on my vagina today? Not once, but twice within a 30 minute period, I received an obscene call to our diet products line. Bad (or hilarious) as this may be, it's pretty sad when the caller is such an awful communicator that it takes him three tries to convey his important message of "I wish I was under your desk eating your pussy." Oo, baby. I am so worked up now. However will I finish my shift, you succulent hunk of manhood. (8:17 & 8:41pm)
From the "Did you really think this out?" department ... A woman called a 24-hour adoption hotline. What she didn't know was that it was a line for putting your unborn baby up for adoption, not to adopt the little brats, which was what she was looking for. I started to give her the number she would need to call when she cut me off. "Is that long distance?" she asked. I confirmed that if she was not in the same area code, then yes, it was indeed long distance, and she told me that her phone was restricted from making long distance calls. Hmm. That's pretty drastic, they only do that after some pretty expensive bills you never paid. So, you're a delinquent coniving invaluable customer to your own phone company ... and you want to adopt someone's kid? Sort of sums up modern parenthood in America without saying a word, doesn't it? (9:04pm)
"I have some questions. Is this the right number?" a phenominally stupid individual asked me when I picked up our company's line. "Well, that would depend on who you were calling and what the question was," I replied. He responded with "Where are you?" Turns out he did in fact have the right number, and was looking for a job here. You know the sad part is, he'll probably be hired. (7:24pm)
I have come to a conclusion. There are few things in this whole wide world quite as amusing as little old ladies having aneurysms over their cable. Specifically over not being able to watch South Pacific. Well worthy of the year she took off her life by shouting at me. "I hate you and wihs you were gone!!" she shrieked in her high-pitched, raspy old lady voice. I laughed. Oh, how I laughed. (9:48pm)
A caller from Kansas said that she had notified us two hours earlier about her cable being out. Apparently, walking around outside she spotted the cause. "I saw a line unscrewed and lying on the fence." After a moment of thought -- and I use the word "thought" loosely -- she mused, "Maybe the wind did it?" Man, wish I had that kind of wind. I'd train it to take out the garbage and fetch me a soda. (9:51pm)
Several pledge callers in Arkansas had their stupidity in unison this evening. Apparently some special on chemcials was being shown on one of the two public television stations in the area. Common sense should dictate that if your happiness depended upon some guy talking about how to mix paint and lighter fluid for good health or something, that you would watch the channel it's on. Instead, at least half a dozen people called me at the pledge line of the station that was not airing the show to complain that it was on the other station. I actually told some of them to watch it on the correct station. It was like asking them to drink dirt or take an ink blot test blindfolded. One man even said to me, "If I wanted to watchi t on the other station, that's what I'd do!" as if it were sacrilege to watch a rival public television station. Just when you thought public TV couldn't get more pathetic... (10:30pm)
A caller to the health products company asked about an item. "I can't remember the name, it was called the oregano kit." (10:52pm)
A cable caller from Oklahoma called in about the cable being out. He noted that his bill of $21 was over a month late. "You think it could be that?" he asked. "I didn't bother paying because I didn't think they'd cut me off for $21." (11:03pm)
A caller to a radio pledge line wanted to know, "Can we see the northern lights?" I was caught off-guard, but told her she'd have to ask the station during business hours the next day. She said the lights would be gone then, so I told her to check by just looking outside. Du-uh. She finally asked if it was okay to look at them with the nake eye. I said sure, assuming that at worst, she would be blinded, and I reasoned that she was stupid enough to make it not such a great loss. (2:11am)
Someone called an adoption hotline to ask what "the wait is for a one-night stand in Sacramento". Unless she's describing how she conceived the child she'd like to put up for adoption, I'm not even sure I understand her question. (3:28pm)
Just when I thought I'd have no write-ups for tonight, I received a call to the health products company. "Which product are you calling for?" I asked per usual. "Oh my GOD!!" the voice exclaimed. "I have to tell you?!" as though I'd just asked her to summarize Proust in sixty seconds or less. She then proceeded to bitch and moan that I should just know which of the 100 or so products she wanted, and then had the nerve to tell me that since she was paying for the call to this 800 number, I shouldn't be wasting her time and money like this. She didn't cease her tirade, even after I noted to her that not only was she calling a toll-free number, but that in the time it was taking her to complain to me, we could have finished the transaction. My fun-o-meter soared to new heights as she finally decided that she hadn't reached AT&T after all and hung up. (5:31am)
A caller to the health products company, when asked which kind of credit card she wanted to use, went to get it, came back and said "Visa". She then sat there, and I had to prompt her for the number. She sighed and said, "Let me put my glasses on" as if just knowing the type of credit card would have enabled her to place an order. To top it all off, she had to fetch another card because the one in her wallet had expired--in October. (5:32am)
A man called into his cable company with what seemed to be a fairly self-explanitory problem: he could not figure out how to get his TV off of mute. I tried to explain that he need only push the mute button again, but had little success, partly due to the fact that he vehemently insisted that it was a cable problem. Foolishly, I tried to make him see that the mute feature on his set had bugger all to do with the cable, and only succeeded in confusing him further. That's what I get for trying to make an analogy between calling the cable company for the mute button and asking a radio station to fix your speakers ... he thought I was telling him to call a radio station to get the problem fixed. (11:22pm)
