I work for a small operation that supplies office telecoms services for companies, and I know most of our customers by name. The other day we got a call from someone we didn’t recognize:
Client: Hi, my internet has gone down, is there a problem with it?
Me: Where are you calling from sorry?
Client: I’m [John Doe] from [Company Name].
Me: Can you check the router we supplied you with and let me know if the lights on the front are on, and if there are any flashing or orange ones please?
Client: All the normal lights on my router are on. I can’t get onto our shared drive. This is totally unacceptable.
Me: OK, sorry about any problems you’re having. We’ll run a quick line test for you now and see if there are any issues. We’ll ring you back on this number in a few minutes.
After doing a line check and confirming there is no issue connecting to his site, I called back.
Me: We couldn’t detect a problem connecting to your office, you’re getting roughly 50Mbps up and down.
Client: But I’m not in my office, I’m at home and I can’t get to our shared drive.
Me: …Right, we don’t supply your home broadband. You’ll need to ring your home ISP.
Client: This is a bit of a farce to be honest, it shouldn’t be this difficult.
At this point the client puts the phone down, and I go back to what I was working on before. Roughly 20 minutes later he rings back again.
Client: So I rang who you said, and they told me it was an issue with Firefox.
Cue 5 seconds of awkward silence.
Client: When can I expect this to be fixed by?
Me: Sorry, we don’t make or support Firefox, that’s your web browser. Our line test shows no problems connecting to your office, so unless there’s a problem with that connection we can’t help you.
Client: You’re f*cking useless you know! I don’t know why I even rang you. I need this shared drive access right now, it’s very important. If you’re not willing to help then we won’t pay you.
At this point he slammed the phone down. We rang the contact we had for this company out of courtesy to check everything was OK at the site. After confirming there was no issues and relaying the details of the call, I was hurried off the phone. About 5 minutes later I receive this email from the general manager:
Client’s boss: Hi, [John Doe] is no longer employed by us. Please do not speak to him in any capacity.
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