Lori Duff Writes

I couldn’t work in customer service. It’s hard enough for me to service the clients I have, and I like most of them and know them personally. I can’t imagine working a job where you have to answer the phone knowing a dissatisfied stranger is on the other end.

But.

If you do have that job, you should at least pretend like it’s your goal to resolve the problem that the customer is calling about.

Let me tell you a story.

In our office, we have a water cooler because the water that comes out of the sink, while likely safe to drink, can be smelly and sometimes off-color.  Once a month, the delivery guy comes with two five gallon jugs for the cooler and takes away the empties. It’s a nifty, smooth system.

Only, like with all ‘updates’ in my universe, the company we used was bought out by another company, and all hell broke loose. They stopped sending us bills. Since we didn’t get bills, we didn’t pay them. Since we didn’t pay them, they didn’t deliver us water. Once we figured that out, and paid them (along with exorbitant late fees) they promised us water in two days.

It didn’t come.

So we called. We were promised water in another two days.

It didn’t come again.

So we called again. We were promised water in another two days, this time with a ‘free delivery fee.’

It still didn’t come.

We called yet again. No apologies, of course, never apologies, but we were promised water in another two days with free delivery and a free jug of water.

Still didn’t come.

Round again, this time the whole shipment would be free.

And, like all free things, it didn’t exist in the real world.

So I took charge. Our office manager/keeper/person in charge of all things that matter is a wonderful human being, but she is southern, which means she is temperamentally nice. I am a Long Island girl, who was taught to use profanity as punctuation. I’m usually nice (and clean-spoken) but I know when to go back to my roots.

I made the phone call this time. Instead of just listening to empty promises (and no apologies, no, never any apologies) I demanded to know why the water had not been delivered.

“Oh,” I was told, by someone whose accent told me the name on his birth certificate was likely not Peter, like he told me it was, “It is because you ordered Crystal Springs water and we’re out.”

I bit my lip almost until it bled. This poor guy at a call center in a foreign country did not deserve the full force of my wrath. Yet. “Was anyone going to call us and tell us that the delivery wasn’t coming because you were out of Crystal Springs?”

“Well, I, uh…”

“Was anyone going to offer us another brand of water?”

“Well, I, uh…”

“Can you get it to me tomorrow?”

“No, we’re out of Crystal Springs.”

I waited for the follow up. It didn’t come. “What can you get me tomorrow?”

“Hold please.”

Before I could say “No, I’ve been holding for a literal month to get the earth’s most plentiful resource” I heard unintelligible music indicating I’d been put on hold.

A few minutes later, ‘Peter’ came back. “We can get you Deer Park tomorrow.”

I thought about saying, “Deer Park? Ew! Who drinks that sewage?!” But I didn’t  think my sarcasm would translate, so I said, “That would be wonderful.”

It did not occur to me that the water would be delivered the next day, but it was. Notably, in a Crystal Springs truck, though it was Deer Park water. Which taught us a terrible lesson. Being nice got us nowhere. Saying, “Okay, thank you” to an empty promise only caused us to waste more time with another phone call. I had to make demands and ask hard questions of a person whose fault it was not, who was probably not within three thousand miles of the screw up.

But the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And the squeaky wheel drives the person who has to listen to the squeaky wheel insane, because that sound is not pleasant. And insane people come home in a bad mood and spread their bad mood and frustration on to their families. I’d rather not squeak. I prefer noiseless, smooth turning of wheels.

This world won’t let me stay greased up, though. Gotta stay rusty, crabby, just this side of nasty. It’s the only way things turn.  

Buy my book, Devil’s Defense, or the audiobook, preorder the sequel, Devil’s Hand, and/or find me on Substack.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.