“Who are you callingma’am?” the person on the line exclaimed. “Do I sound like a woman to you?” Obviously, he didn’t want a response because he kept going. “I know you young people these days are all about freedom or whatever you call it, but I have no problem being what God made me, which is a red-blooded man.”
Oh boy.
“Of course, sir. I’m terribly sorry for misgendering you. It was a mistake as?—”
“Mis-what? Christ, there’s a term for everything these days, isn’t there? Forget it. Are you capable of handling this issue, or should I speak to your supervisor?”
A moment of panic gripped my chest because the last time I had to patch a customer through to a supervisor, I got an hour-long lecture about de-escalating the situation and then was stuck in a four-hour session of training videos about retention techniques and call controls.
But the truth? I actually had no idea what this conversation was about. I was exhausted, had more excitement in the last twenty-four hours than I’d had in the last year,andwas trying to wrap my brain around Hiro and his murder locker. Or, rather, why I didn’t give a crap about Hiro’s murder locker.
Because he cares about you.
Thankfully, my survival instincts kicked in and reminded me I was at work and this was no big deal. Brain fog was a normal occurrence for me. I walked around lost in my own head more than anything else, and I always managed. I just needed to do a little damage control.
“Yes, sir,” I answered, staring at the laptop in front of me.Thank God for recorded calls.I leaned in close, squinting at the words on the screen. “You’re calling because you are having problems connecting to the internet.”
“No. It’s connected. But it’s buffering so bad I might as well turn it off. How’m I supposed to watch the fight tonight if it freezes every other second? I bet a lot of money on tonight’s match.”
“Yes, I can see how that would be very frustrating,” I said, pulling up the manual for resetting the router. I’d done this with customers a thousand times, but I always liked to have the instructions in front of me because I somehow always forgot something.
“Frustrating?” he yelled, and I winced. “What’s frustrating is that you charge me an arm and a leg for this service and then make me pay on top of it just to watch the shit I want to watch. And now you’re trying to make me pay even more to go ad-free!”
“Yes, sir,” I said, only wanting to acknowledge I was stilllistening.
“After all that, you still don’t have the decency to make sure the channels even work!”
“I’m very sorry for all the trouble, sir. I can walk you through resetting your router and receiver now, and that will hopefully fix the issue.”
“And that’s another thing!” he roared. “Why am I the one having to do your job? You should come out here and fix it yourself.”
My shoulders slumped a little. Usually, I was a lot more resilient when listening to people yell at me. But I really was exhausted, and he was loud.
Should have taken a nap instead of searching for a murder locker.
“Are you there?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, pulling up another screen. “I am more than happy to schedule an appointment for one of our technicians to come out to you and resolve the issues in person. I can even have them change your cable box if you prefer.”
“What will that cost me?”
“There is an automatic service fee of seventy-five dollars, but?—”
“Seventy-five dollars! Are you out of your mind? Why would I pay you to fix a problem your equipment caused?”
“I’m happy to talk you through resetting the equipment now. There is no charge for that.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered. Then he started yelling, “Lynn, can you believe this shit? I told you we should have gotten satellite!”
I heard a woman’s voice somewhere in the background.
Seconds later, he mumbled, “Don’t be telling my wife about those illegal channels I got.”
Oh, Lynn was his wife. Lucky her.
“I can’t see those here on your account, sir,” I replied.
“Of course not, ‘cause they’re illegal. But I know you like to stir up trouble with people.”
