Doctor’s wife: You guys are going to get my husband’s pracitice flagged by the insurance companies.
Biller: We only enter in the system what you have written on the charge ticket.
Doctor’s wife: Well you guys are the billing company. You should know better not to trust everything you see.
221 West 21st Street
Lorain, Ohio
Customer: Hi! Are you a horticulturalist?
Clerk: Yes.
Customer: Were is your washroom?
Ottawa, Ontario
Canadia
Overheard by: Counter Guy
Man at music counter: Do you happen to have ‘The Wreck of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’?
Indianapolis, Indiana
Overheard by: Bearphan
Employee #1: May I take your order, please?
Drive-thru customer: I want a Double Whopper, plain — only cheese and a little mustard.
Employee #1: … I’m sorry, we don’t sell Double Whoppers here.
Customer: Oh, you don’t? Okay, let me get just a Whopper, then.
Employee #2: Sir, we don’t sell Whoppers. This is Wendy’s.
Customer, unfazed: Oh. Okay then.
1066 Independence Boulevard
Norfolk, Virginia
Overheard by: wage slave
Customer: I want to ask you about the solid wood tubing. Is that
hollow?
CSR: The Solid Wood Tubing?
Customer: Yes.
CSR: No, it is solid.
Customer: Oh, I see.
737 Main Street
Buffalo, New York
Lawyer: Then why did you have sex with your cousin while she was sleeping?
Client: I honestly thought she wanted it. Really, I would never do anything to hurt her. I think of her like a sister.
Lawyer: Perhaps we shouldn’t put you on the witness stand.
2605 E. Cliff Road
Burnsville, Minnesota
Dell Support operator: OK, sir, now I’m going to need you to insert your System CD. Do you have that handy?
Irish customer: Is dat dis Pentanium ting?
The other listeners on conference laugh.
Dell Support operator: Excuse me, sir, there’s a lot of background noise. I’m just going to turn off the other microphones.
–As a novel approach to caller boredom while waiting for a techSupp droid to become free, Dell have instituted a situation where callers get to listen in while said droid deals with the calls ahead of one in the queue.
So the overhearing was actually pretty widely geographically
distributed, between:
The charmin’ Irish Callcentre colleen, who was wherever in Ireland Dell have their support centre;
Her interlocutor, who by his accent was also in that country;
The various other listeners-in, who might have been anywhere in
Europe;
Me, at Long Lane, Newbury, England.
Overheard by: CDWriter
Customer: So where in the instruction manual does it tell me to save the receipt?
Customer Service Rep.: You’re kidding me, right? You mean to say that you have to be told to save your receipt?
Customer: Yes, I do.
Customer Service Rep.: So, if you were to go out and buy a roll of toilet paper, it would have to say “Tear here, wipe there” or else you wouldn’t know how to use it? Because both are pretty much common sense, sir.
835 41st Street
Des Moines, Iowa
Overheard by: christiana (while doing remote observations on customer service calls)
Customer #1: Thanks for your generosity! I know we forced ourselves onto you.
Customer #2: Yes, it’s just that it was so cute, so little, we couldn’t resist!
Bossman: Well, it will be here whenever you want it.
9500 Owensmouth Avenue
Chatsworth, California
A handicapped client has had to be restrained for assaulting a staff.
Co-worker #1: Your behaviour was completely out of line. You hit me, tried to bite me and pissed all over my leg. How would you like it if I pissed on you if I was angry at you?
Client: I wouldn’t like it.
Co-worker #1: Hey [Jake], when you are angry at your girlfriend, do you piss all over her and try to bite her?
Co-worker #2: No, I don’t. We talk things out and listen to each other. Why did you piss on us during the restraint?
Client: You guys were not listening to me.
2a Ormonde Avenue
St. Catharines, Ontario
Canadia
