Saturday, May 21, 2011

Thank you for calling Dion's! How can you frustrate me today?

There are many reasons to love my job. However, this post will not be focusing on those positive aspects.

As part of my job working at Dion's, I help answer the phones to take phone orders. Although it is a vital way for the business to remain successful, my disdain for them continues. Let me give a few examples of my favorite phone calls.

1) Me: "Hello! Thank you for calling Dion's on Academy, how may I help you?"
Customer: "Yeah, hold on."
Excuse me. Who called who here? Did I interrupt your important conversation with your family? My mom thinks next time this happens, I should say, "I'm sorry I called at an inconvenient time! Why don't you call me back when you're ready to place an order and not waste my time?" and hang up. Oh, it's tempting.

2) The screamers. I haven't decided if their absurd volume is a result of a poor experience in the past with phone orders or perhaps their lack of belief in my intelligence. Maybe it's a mixture. Who knows, maybe they're new to the phone world and are so excited they don't have to send telegrams anymore!

3) The nervous mumblers. Perhaps they are stunned by the mellifluence of my voice, startled by how adeptly I ask for their order; whatever the reason, there are some people who act completely terrified on the phone. They can't remember what they want to order, their name, their phone number, what country they live in or how to speak in general. I'm not a terrifying person, really! I never laugh at customers on the phone. I'll wait until I hang up for that, of course!

4) The slow spellers. "My name is John. That's J..................................................O...................................H.........................................................................................................................................................N."
Oh, that spelling of John! Good thing you spelled that out for me, I was probably going to spell it like this: Yjonne, the traditional Norwegian spelling. Phew.

5) The me monsters. (Yes, I stole that from a Brian Regan skit. Good stuff) There are people who call in an order when they're literally turning into our store. How do I know this? I've barely hung up the phone, delivered the ticket to my station, about to put on my gloves and the drive-thru workers are at my station looking for the order I just wrote down 1 minute ago. Come on folks! Giving us a 15 minute heads up isn't terribly difficult, right? Even though there is a childish part of me that wants to go out to the customer sitting in line and tell them they'll have to wait their turn, laughing bitterly, I know what I have to do. Make them their salads. After all, the customer is always right. Right?

What's the moral of the story? Get a college degree so you don't have to spend the rest of your life trying to please customers that, let's face it, you don't really care about.

1 comment:

Allison said...

I may or may not have laughed out loud many a time while reading this post. Good work.