“I’m not one to complain, but…”

Actually, you ARE one to complain.  I know this because you’re complaining right now.  You live to complain, you do it pretty much constantly, and you telling me that you’re not one to complain is a lot like you saying “I don’t want to be mean or anything” or “I’m not trying to get anything for free here.”  You do, and you are.  And you are complaining.

The money’s better, but sometimes I really miss being unemployed.  Sleeping late, bike rides, cooking meals.  Can’t do any of that anymore.  Too busy.  And it’s such a shitty job.  I’m grateful to have it and all, but jesus.  No matter how hard I work or how much I do, it’s relentless.  These people never stop.  They’re always calling, always complaining, always wasting my time with such insignificant shit that I wonder if they’re unemployed because how else do they have the time?

For any new readers (especially the returning one from Australia, hi!), I work in customer service for an alcohol company.  It used to be marketing and I used to write stuff for the Internet all day, but there was a corporate takeover and the people who weren’t fired were re-organized and now I’m writing stuff for the Internet and answering phones, which really sucks because the phones are a questions/comments line.  While we do get a fair amount of questions, we mostly get complaints.  I like to think that some of these complaints are legitimate (maybe someone actually got an empty can of beer), but for real, most of them are lying to get free shit.  I don’t work for the questions/comments hotline.  I work for the Free Shit Hotline.

I mean, what kind of life do you lead that you LIE about a purchase you made (and honestly, that purchase probably breaks down to between 40 and 60 cents per beer) and spend 15 minutes bitching over the phone to a complete stranger in the hopes of getting a free T-shirt?  Is it worth that much?  What kind of person are you?

And when they back up “I’m not one to complain, but…” with “in this economy,” I want to set the phone on fire.  Bitch, I know the economy.  I live in the economy.  I wouldn’t be here, listening to your shit, if it wasn’t for this economy.  And again, you are one to complain.  If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be taking time out of your Friday night (what kind of boring ass party are you having that calling me is the highlight of the evening?) to hassle me about your single fucking beer.  Fucking asshole.

Just…god.  What a waste of time my life feels like sometimes.  The day “customer service” became more important than “common decency” was the day my fate was sealed.  And no, managers, NO.  The two are not interchangeable.  Manners should always be more important than “apologizing and empathizing” and some people should have their mouths washed out with soap – or at least be verbally reprimanded – when the first thing they say after I answer the phone is “Yeah, this beer tastes like rotten ass shit.”

My default response has become, “Personally, sir, I’ve never tasted that before, could you use another word to describe it?”

Or, you know, tell me that they bought 3 cases of beer, and all of them were “flat” (ps, we know you’re lying when you say that, LIARS), and they don’t have any of them left or a receipt but they kept a single, tattered, empty case and now they want all their money back.  Really?  Let me spin a little analogy for you, Billy Bob.  Let’s say you bought 10 boxes of Twinkies from Wal-Mart, and the refined palates of your daughter’s preschool class say they tasted bad.  If you waddled into said Wal-Mart the next day carrying nothing but a single empty cellophane wrapper, what are the odds of getting your money back?  If you care enough to harass a total stranger (me) about something you consumed anyway, I assume you’d care enough to retain the packaging, or the product itself, or some piece of information that would prove to me that you’re not totally full of rotten ass shit.

I’ll never win the Time/Money balance in my own head.  I’d like to believe that I’d choose Time (ie, quality of life), but then I think about how long my car will last or how badly I want a house and I know I’ll always choose Money (ie, job).  I’m way too interested in security to pursue longterm unemployment, which is why I drive myself closer to a not-even-close-to-middle-management aneurysm every day.

When I wasn’t banging my head against the desk, I posted Halloween pics here.