Don’t You Use That Tone With Me!
You know what bugs me? I mean, really irks me? That tone. That tone that says, “You are annoying me right now with your stupidity.” Sometimes it has been given to me from tech support and other times from a waitress at a restaurant. Everyone is capable of using the tone and every time I hear it I go from being a calm and submissive polite woman to a pissed off and emotional warrior. I’ll express my anger in completely illogical ways – always leaving the person confused and writing me off as insane.
True Story:
I was talking to a customer service person on the phone today regarding a duplicate charge on a credit card. All I wanted was confirmation that the charge was duplicated. But from the moment she started asking me for the security information to confirm I could be given information on the account she gave me the tone. The tone that had an audible eyeroll and annoyed sigh. She didn’t even get 2 questions out before I said, “Wow. You sound really angry already. I haven’t even asked my question yet.” Well, that was a big mistake. She just got more rude from there and started interrupting me. So – what did I do? I yelled at her again, “You’re being mean!” and I did the most awesome thing ever…I cried.
The End.
Please tell me you’ve done something similar. That when faced with rude behavior you find yourself unable to ignore it and unable to confront it successfully. Instead your emotions take over and you are written off as The Crazy Person that the culprit will later tell their friends about. Please tell me I’m not alone.
Anyone?
I have toooooooootally burst into tears on the phone with customer service people. I don’t want to confide how many times.
i can’t handle 12 year old boys who think they’re man enough to call me a b!tch. but he can’t look me in the eye or say it to my face. he has to say it out the side of his mouth. look, twit child, i put up with “crackhead” umpteen times already from you. i must now come across as the crazy lady who yells at kids at school.
*for the record, i had been asking him and his friends to be quiet at a fine arts performance where HIS FRIENDS were performing. in the end, i threw him out.
No, but I hope that call was recorded for quality assurance.
I was 2 weeks away from my due date with Arun and had a squealing, crying, dying squirrel in a trap right outside my bathroom window. I was on the phone with Sprint about my cell phone bill about some really, really expensive charges. The guy wasn’t overly rude, but I did lose it and began crying and told him my entire sob story, including the squirrel. Crying is something I rarely do on the phone because I used to be a customer service rep. I know the routine. Anyway. The guy actually CALLED ME BACK and was really nice and took quite a few of the charges off from my bill.
We’ve all had those days, whether we’d like to admit it or not. And anyone in customer service has been on both sides of the fence. I know on more than one occasion I’ve been rude to a customer, and then turned around and had a vendor be rude to me, which always prompts me to be a nicer person to the next customer that calls. Perhaps somewhere there’s a customer service person coming home from work and getting ready to write a blog post about the crazy lady who called about a credit card charge. But I’ll bet she was a whole lot nicer to the next person she talked to!
Guilty as charged.
About a week after I had a miscarriage, and was already a wreck, we went to Lowe’s to get some lumber. We needed to rent one of their trucks to get it home and I checked in with the chick at the desk and she said it was available and to go get the lumber and come back for paperwork. Well, when we came back 15 minutes later, the truck was checked out. She told me that we should have reserved it. I told her that I thought that’s what we had done, as she hadn’t given us any other option. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s due back in 90 minutes so you can wait on it,” was her response.
This crazy hormonal chick went INSANE on her. I think I may have called her some names. I definitely cried. Then, I made all of my husband return all of the lumber we had just paid for.
That was 4 years ago, and she still makes me mad when I think of it.
Been there, done that. In an airport at 6 AM no less.
Oh goodness, I have so done this. I called one time to dispute charges on our cell phone and the guy was so not from this country and did not understand a word I was saying. So he just kept getting rude and all but calling me a liar. So I got way mad and started crying too. I have many a time cussed a person out, called names, and thrown a fit with rude customer service people.
BTW, I’m holding a giveaway over at my blog!
I use the old, three strikes, you’re out trick:
1. Repeat what I said.
2. “That’s not what I asked. Let me repeat what I said:…”
3. “You need to listen to what I’m saying. I am a paying customer and if you want to keep my business you need to listen better to me. Clear?” And repeat what I said.
If at any point they interrupt or don’t deal with me by step 3, the following comes out of my mouth: “Its obvious you can’t help me. Please transfer me to your supervisor or manager.”
I cried once at the phone company because they (a) didn’t send me bills then (b) charged me FIVE TIMES when I gave them a credit card number and (c) refused to reverse the charge. Then I got mad and sent the credit card company after them.
I am an Adoption Specialist and an adoptive parent was ranting and raving on the fact that the adoption was taking forever (forgetting that it took her 6 months to provide divorce papers but you know that was my fault too so there) and I had just found out that my friend’s husbands suicide attempt was successful. So I am sitting there and smiling my “G-d if you only knew how stupid I really think you are” smile when all of a sudden I felt my low lip quivering and the tears just started. She then yelled at me for not telling her that I was “emotionally unstable”.
OY VEY!
I click the off button on the phone first and then I bawl my eyes out, then I yell, then I make my husband call them back. He is much better and dealing with those who choose to be insensitive customer service people.
Um, embarrassingly enough, that happens to me all the time, as a matter of fact my husband makes me call all the customer service departments because I go “zero to yelling” and making a fool of myself.
I 100% sobbed like a baby when someone cut in front of me on line at Ross Dress For Less. I politely pointed out her mistake, she got mean with me, and I burst into tears.
I once cried because someone honked their horn at me for not taking a left turn into oncoming traffic. “I did nothing wrong, and he.. he… he… HONKED at me!” I sobbed to my husband. I’m rational like that.
hi, right here raising my hand!
I have burst into tears many times while on the phone with total strangers. You’re not alone on that.
i hung up on tech support one of the FIVE THOUSAND TIMES MY internet went down do to faulty phonelines…he was a jerk AND HE CALLED BACK!! to continue being mean to me.
whatevah. Stupidhead
maybe we should start a maturity group..cough
I’ve certainly done that.
Ugh, I did so a few weeks ago with Verizon… We got our cable/internet/phone bill, which is also suppose to have our cell phones on it. It was 400$… I nearly shit myself, especially since the month prior, it was only 183$… I called them up and apparently they had forgotten to charge us for the cell phone portion the month prior, so now we had to pay two months worth of cell phone bills. because of their mistake. This came right after my one boyfriend lost his job, and the other boyfriend took a MAJOR paycut, that he wasn’t suppose to take… I burst into tears on the phone with them, and then I hung up on them and called my mom and cried to her. /sigh.
All the time. I am not patient and if they start giving attitude to me? They are going to get it back and 9 times out of 10 I end up asking for a manager. If they are nice then we are all good….they will be treated how they treat me. Sorry, it is the job you are working which you may not like, but that isn’t my problem. My bosses were listening to me one day and I didn’t realize it. One of them (a lawyer) said, I think you should go to law school. LOL
Are you ready for this? My husband gives me the tone. All the time. He swears he doesn’t mean to, in fact, he usually insists it all in my head. IT IS NOT ALL IN MY HEAD.
Anyway, his use of the tone will escalate any minor disagreement (say, putting a dirty dish into the clean dishwasher load) into a full-on shriekfest on my part. Possibly with tears.
I have never cried on the phone with customer service before. I have yelled an awful lot, however.
I have so done that, and so hated myself for it. It drives me crazy that I’m so sensitive to a TOTAL STRANGER’S tone!
Guilty……2 months post-partum krazee….cried, cussed out the phone company and hung up on them.
Hopefully that call was being monitored by a supervisor or something. That is just uncalled for! She should have apologized for sounding angry immediately and changed her attitude!
Been there a few times. One time I went on a rampage and started cussing the guy out. Poor Jose. He told me if I didn’t calm down he’d have to hang up on .
I get upset about things like this too. Something I do that heads off that kind of snarkiness from customer service folk, I say, “I’m sorry, could you tell me your name again?” and then I ask them to spell it. It sometimes snaps them out of their snark.
I only cry when people are nice to me.
Like when I was flying to America and during the layover in Glasgow I found out that one of my bags was missing and the only reason I was going to catch a connecting flight to Boston was because it was delayed. Oh and also because they had spare seats on that flight. Because the travel agency had booked me on a plane that didn’t exist.
Well, I had spent the night at the airport waiting for the planing to start so I was tired. And when the nice man told me was going to make sure I was on the flight with both my bags I just started sniffling. Tiny sniffles. He rubbed my shoulder and gave me a certificate so I could get a snack. I had to swallow very very hard not to go into full on sobs. I ran behind a corner and called my mother and cried a little and asked her why everything had to be so very hard.
Then I went to sit by the gate and I texted my father that oh my god my bag is gone, and he was being so supportive saying things like “You’re my daughter. You are strong. Just wait it out.” that I stopped with the sniffling.
…And then after two hours, twenty minutes before the plane was to take off, they called my name in the speakers and asked me to come to the desk. The nice man was there and he said he had my bag. I BAWLED. Oh my God I was doing that crying where those NOISES come out and you can’t stop it. And I kept saying THANK YOU SO MUCH and in the end the nice man was crying too, and so was the woman behind the desk, and the nice man was hugging me and saying I was so welcome and he gave me a hanky. I went back to sit to wait for the plane and kept crying until I was seated.
I love Glasgow airport. I know that man was running around like a loon all over the airport trying to get my bag. I’m glad my crying made it worth it for him haha.
I have this really annoying habit of crying when I get really angry. It happens so often when I’m talking to customer service people, that I have developed a little speech I five when I can tell I’m about to cry, which I pretend makes me sound less crazy, but probably makes me sound more crazy.
Although I have noticed that after I give my little speech the other person usually gets really polite and apologetic, so I’m not sure I care.
I have never cried to a customer service people; I wouldn’t want to give them the satisfaction, especially if they were being horrible. I just hang up (while longing for the days when I had a phone I could SLAM in their ear) and call back to speak with someone competent. Sometimes I’ve had to call back more than once because I kept getting the same person.
Ah… yes with the tooooone and the yelling. (The crying comes after I slam the phone down.) I had just inadvertently tried to break the receiver at work (when I worked for my dad) and was sobbing at my desk about a bank error for which the company ~refused~ to take responsibility. (I clearly remember yelling “But it’s YOUR fault!” ad nauseum.) The error had shot my account into the negative and all kinds of other charges were bouncing. My dad came to my desk (because he, my coworkers, and probably some people in Bolivia) heard me yelling on the phone. I sobbed my way through my story and then Dad, normally pretty supportive, said, “If you’d keep a little extra money in your account, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.” How I kept from killing him that day is beyond me.
And a crying on the phone/this lady is surely crazy absolutely true story: My first apartment had a lake view and one afternoon I was watching the ducks waddle around and be cute. I spotted a duck who was hopping on one foot and struggling to get to bread I had thrown from my balcony. The other ducks would get to it first bc they had two working feet and I got more and more upset at them for not letting their friend/sibling eat. I got so upset that I went in the house and called the apartment complex to see about getting medical attention for the duck. (Now is probably a good time to mention that I was PMSing like a m-o-t-h-e-r.) The apt. complex referred me to Animal Control, I believe, who said it wasn’t their responsibility, and told me to call some vet’s office. (I don’t really remember why but this also happened some seven years ago.) I clearly remember, however, calling the vet and SOBBING on their voice mail about the poor little hungry duck and how no one was letting him eat and surely he was going to starve to death… and on and on. I left all (ALL!) of my contact info, hung up, and cried some more. I can only imagine what the employees at that office thought when they heard that message. I’m probably famous at their holiday parties. So in case you’re looking for it… The Crazy lives right —-> here <—-.
Sadly, I had the crazy moment today at a conference for work. Even more sadly, it was directed toward my boss. Anger, then tears. I didn’t gain any credibility points whatsoever and probably dug myself in deeper on the “bad” list. Oh the joy!
I had to go off on a customer service rep with a bank regarding a credit card once. The hows and whys of the charge itself is a long story (and not a duplicate, but rather a rogue “late charge” that showed up a month or two after I paid the account balance off in full). The rep actually asked me why I waited so long to respond to them? Gah. I guess she thought my own job wasn’t enough, and I needed to do THEIR job immediately as well.
But tnat doesn’t top the time that someone from our mortgage company called regarding a less-than-three-days-late payment. I think it even tops your crying!
It was that day I got stuck in all that traffic that was backed up from the Canola seed spill. I very calmly told him that now was not a good time. But I didn’t stop there: I also told him I was sitting on the side of the road waiting for traffic to die down because my car would run hot if I didn’t, and I was about to pee in my pants. Seriously. At least I was able to stop myself before I told him that it was that time of the month and I was cramping, too.
Oh, God, yes! I *work* in retail/customer service and usually can stay pretty calm in any situation, but in the middle of the Christmas rush, when I was still rather new at a really busy store an older woman was incredibly rude to me and talked to me as if I was stupid. I was short with her the rest of the transaction and she actually said to me, “You need to calm down, you’re very tense and rude!” I actually *whined* back at her–”You were rude to me FIRST!” like a small child. I felt so stupid!
I so sympathize! I get pissy and incoherent and then I say something sarcastic and hang-up (or walk away), which usually means that I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do and I have to call back and start all over. I always feel like a complete idiot and I hate it.
For a while, I went around telling various clerks, “You know, you COULD be nicer.” I’d usually say it right AFTER they handed me my value meal and just before I hightailed it out the door.