Call Centre muppets
Judging by the stories presented so far you might think that the biggest idiots in the world are some of the people who work in call centres.
As someone who has worked in several call centres i can confirm that some of them are beaurocratic nightmares with policies in place that encourage strict adherence to procedure above customer welfare and helpfulness. They encourage their operatives to hide the truth behind corporate speak and deliberate obfuscation.

Stupid as some of these places are (though not the one i currently work at) though they pale into insignificance by the people who call them. As anyone who has worked dealing with the British general public will tell you the majority of them are right minded individuals with a healthy dose of common sense. There are sadly though some very very stupid people out there.

Don't believe me?? Open any tabloid newspaper and look at the classified ads. There will be, nestling amongst the junk, an advert for a baldness cure that promises miraculous results. Now while you're thinking "no one would be stupid and gullible enough to believe that" consider that they wouldn't post the advert if no one ever bought there wonder product.

For example i currently work in a call centre supporting mobile credit card terminals. We supply three different makes of terminal, all mobile and all GPRS enabled. It is important that we know what type of terminal that you have so i can diagnise the fault
So i ask "what make of terminal do you have?"
The number of times i get the answer "a (insert company name here) one"
Or " A mobile GPRS one" is really depressing. The less said about the woman who rang in earlier this week with "problems with her portable terminator" the better.

The best one i ever personally experienced happened when i worked for an internet providor back in the days of dial up on tech support. The gentleman in question called as he had gone into his local retail outlet and asked what he needed to get onto the internet. The Salesman had quite helpfully told the gentleman that all he needed was the CD with all the software on it and to take it home and put it in his pc's CD reader. The man couldn't get it working and was getting more and more confused when i was asking him to click on various desktop items.

It quickly became apparant that the customer had taken the CD home and put it in his state of the art Stereo system as he didnt think that he needed a computer as his stereo was so advanced.
Again the less said about the bloke trying to connect to the internet without a phone line (before the days of wireless) the better
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 16:27, 3 replies)

"As anyone who has worked dealing with the British general public will tell you the majority of them are right minded individuals with a healthy dose of common sense"
who have you been talking to?

it's common knowledge that the average person is fucking stupid, and that half of people are stupider than that.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 16:41, closed)

Vipros = right
Haven't listened on phones to your countrymen for nigh on ten years, I can authoritatively conclude that most of them are indeed, thick, belligerent, lazy and rude.
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 17:07, closed)

OK
fair point but i was trying to be nice for once in my life. Don't worry my normal bitter disposition will soon reassert itself
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Sat 5 Sep 2009, 12:01, closed)