haughty customer representatives

I love holding the phone to my ear for 25 minutes, and listening to execrable jazz as I wait to speak with a customer representative. This experience becomes much more pleasant though, when you hear the jazz stop (at long last), and the ring of a telephone, letting you know that the waiting is finally over.

After being told about 25 times during the jazz concert (once a minute or so) that they appreciated my patience, I thought that maybe there would be some sort of apology for the incredibly long wait. Silly me. She was too busy reading thru her 'How to be a Snot--for dummies' book, apparently.

As I explained that we were worried that our pipes were going to freeze, she interrupted by telling me that it's not cold enough for that.

Now I may be a girl, and I may be blonde, but I DO know that the temperature must get pretty cold for freezing. Maybe since she works for the gas company (err...answering the phone anyway) she's now the expert on just when our pipes will freeze...but seeing as the temperatures dropped into the 20's last night, I felt that maybe she didn't know what the devil she was talking about. But why argue with a know-it-all? It's only annoying, and I'd be unable to poke her in the eyes if things got out of hand. So I let it go.

I then asked if they were indeed going to be turning our gas on today, as their confirmation email stated they would. After reading off our account number (which is about 127 numbers long), she then asked for our name. I told her it would be under David's name. She then inquired as to my name. Golly moses. Heaven forbid that she give information to the wrong person...you just never know what they might do with the top-secret intelligence.

I know that it's not a lot of fun answering phones. I did it as a job for a year. I also know, however, that it's pretty easy to be polite to people, and not make them feel like they're wasting your time--especially when they're being polite and not yelling about being on hold for almost a half hour. Maybe she hasn't taken the politeness course yet.

After asking for our address, she informed me that no, they had just made our account that morning, and they never send a person out the same day.
So why was the account not made two days ago when we initially made our request? And why were we sent an email that did in fact say we would have our gas turned on today? Heaven only knows, because I certainly don't, and if she did, she wasn't about to tell me.

But it's all good, because our pipes won't freeze. Our customer representative said so. And of course, she knows best.


::::just keep bowing and back away slowly::::