Today, I was called an Underling by a wicked old lady.

She called because... horror of horrors... well, I'll post the conversation.
She was a dottery too, so the ... indicate pauses.

I.... ... ... just don't.... know where ... to start. ... ... ... I am... so... angry. You call yourselves... ... a... respected ... organisation... ... and you do THIS?... Do... you... know... who... xxx... is? He's a Lord. And I am related to him.
No... I don't expect you do. And as your Irish it matters not a jot if you know who he is. I hardly expect the like of you to care.
You... sent... a... letter... to my GARDNER. MY GARDENER. He can't afford your services. If you're going to send anything send it to me. We... we don't care for your company... very much... so don't send me things. That's what's so disgusting about your company. You sent it to my gardener.

The above went on for a further five minutes.

Now, I'm going to be a bit rude. You. People like you. You... are... underlings. "

Fucking bitch. I told her not to be so rude and hung up. Bitch.

You know, it really was "National Rude Customers Day" today. At work today, we had no less than four very rude people, including:
- The guy that called a colleague of mine stupid under his breath (I heard you, twat)
- The old man who threatened to hit another colleague with his walking stick
- The guy who hung around for two hours saying that we needed to fix his laptop when there was absolutely nothing wrong.
- A man who told a colleague to "fuck off".

Yep, twats, all of them.

Type stuff for a min, run defrag, say you've "fixed" it and give him a £50 bill.

Could do...thing is, our tech people won't even look at it because there's no fault!

How about your manager, surely he understands a pebkac error when he sees one

but call centre monkeys are the underclass.

As for shop staff they are the worst - I had to call one a fucking wanker after he point blank refused to process a health and safety recall unless I had an invoice (the recall said bring the invoice IF possible - it wasn't possible because their spectacularly awful system hadn't sent invoices out from july to october).

Don't feed the troll.

Got no intention of doing so...

My point is that these people work for organisations that they know are absolutely shite and they expect not to be abused for their devotion to mammon.

If their company doesn't give good service then its staff deserve all they get for continuing to work there.

Come on, now. In my experience it's always the "company rules" that stop you giving decent service, and when you do it bites you in the arse.

Indeed .... that's why I'm self-employed.

Good call, sir.

It depends on the company, to be honest. If it's a penny pinching bastard company, then yeah, you're going to run into trouble.

If, on the other hand, you work for a company whose attitude is "make the buggers happy whatever the cost" (as I do) then you won't have any problems.

The company I work for is like that too, which makes calls like hers all the more bizarre. Turns out that neither she or her gardener are on our mailing list so fuck knows what she was on about.