Fans! Pens! Stupidity!
We all know that there is an at best adversarial relationship between Joe Public and call centres. At worst, they view each other with outright contempt or hostility. When I did my stint at T-Mobile, I got a mixture of the angry, retarded, and of course, the nice people.

And of course, as the weeks wore into months, I got bored. Very bored. And we all know the consequences that can create, especially in a call centre.

When this happened, it was in the middle of summer, and the office was hotter than Satan's left armpit. And smelled about the same as well. However, I was one of the lucky ones who had a fan on his desk. But, being the bored b3tan I was, I started to fiddle. My chosen method of fiddling? Poking a pen through the bars of the fan, just to hear the slight rattling noise, that's all. But it never works that way, does it? It certainly didn't that day. I was half-listening to a customer in the background, moaning about 20p on her bill or something. And I was employing my chosen method of fiddling, when the customer said something that made me sit up and take notice. With the pen still in my hand.

Which was promptly ripped out of my hand, into the fan, creating a noise along the lines of "BBBBBBBBRASSHKJDDADSSDAADADADAD RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE". I've never moved so fast in my life. Soon enough, the fan was turned off, but I noticed three things. The first of which was an irate manager heading my way. The second was the customer asking what the hell that noise was. The third was every single person in the call centre looking at me. Close to 1000 people. I've never been so embarrassed in my life, apart from that time with... well that's another story.

And they confiscated my fan. Bastards.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 4 Sep 2009, 11:35, 4 replies)

*prepares for wrath of DP*

( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 12:22, closed)

Ah, what's he going to do?
Phone a call centre to complain?
( jim_bob can herd cats., Fri 4 Sep 2009, 12:35, closed)

I've done this
Bits of shattered fan blades everywhere.

Oddly enough, the pen was fine.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 15:24, closed)