:-)

Awww.

Wow. There is hope for Mankind.

@2 - I agree. As a customer service rep, I can attest that no customer service rep is this nice.

@5: As a customer service rep who works with a ton of customer service reps: fuck you, there's a lot of us here who deal with clients like this every day.

I know you're probably trying to joke, but really, customer service reps have a rough enough time in a mostly thankless job.

This sort of thing happens, and these are the sorts of opportunities that keep many of us going through the endless abuse and complaints. The chance to help someone who really needs it is the best part of our job.

An I, Anonymous that's not about slut-shaming/rape-accusations or petty, perceived slights on the bus or other public places, but rather human kindness and decency in the face of terrible illness and soul-crushing, thankless work? What has this august publication come to?

Thanks for this I.A. Yes, indeed, something in my eye I need to attend to....
I'm commenting just to prove that the I.A. column doesn't need to be someone odious complaining about someone horrible, in order to get comments.

How is this the best I, Anonymous ever? Where's the passive aggression? Where's the petty anonymous backstabbing? Where's the holier-than-though moralizing? Why did I even read this?

@10

Don't blame other people for what you read. You probably put yourself in this position. Did you read this alone, for example? Did you have anything to drink? What were you wearing when you read this?

I'm with #7; eat it #5. No matter how misanthropic I've become over the centuries of customer service I've worked, I can STILL be the biggest cream puff in the world when it comes to really, truly helping someone who needs it AND appreciates it.

I guess this could be fake. It seems so incredible.

But maybe the satellite TV company does one like this on purpose every 10,000th or so call, just to make everyone else's experience all the more bitter.

what the hell is incredible about it? There is such a thing as every day decency. You wouldn't know it by reading slog comments, because we (and by we, I mean the rest of you, because I don't have the energy or a job where I sit in front of a computer) are a bunch of cynical narcissistic pseudointellectuals who don't have anything better to do but perpetuate culture wars via an online blog. Maybe set aside the violent obsessive self involvement for ten minutes and take a look at the world around you. People are decent to each other every day.

This is absolutely not fake. As an ex-customer service rep, I can tell you that the good ones love a challenge to break up the monotony of routine calls.

I'll take it a step further (and risk being called a lair): some of us actually thoroughly enjoyed taking calls from completely pissed off customers that had been dealing with the slackers in our company for way too long.

We took it as a personal challenge to reverse the negative perception of the company, by bending over backwards to rectify the situation.

It's overcoming adversity that makes life fun.

Of course, many customers had expectations that were completely out of line with reality. But the cool thing is that when you know that you've done your very very best to make things right and they still aren't happy, you can hang up with a sense of pride, knowing that you tried, and that their rants and raves of rage aren't about you.

I'm not in that industry anymore. But I thank fucking christ that I used to be, because now I'm a 'customer service rep' whisperer.

All we, as customers, have to do is re-frame the problem.

Instead of "Me against you/your company"

Make it "Us against this problem that we are both having."

And WHAM!!! 95% of the customer service people out there will nearly kill themselves to make things right.

Fantastic I anonymous this week! Great job, kids!

#4: Humankind. Get with the program! Ha! I jest.

Unfortunately, that rep is probably getting harassed by their boss about call times, or have to shaft the next twenty customers to bring it back down.

That makes it that much bigger of a thing. This wasn't common decency, that was biting the bullet to do good.

Wow. This the best I, Anon that I have ever read in The Stranger.
My heart goes out to the grateful faraway daughter, her stoke surviving mother (and step-father), and major kudos to the customer service rep for so patiently walking Mom through regaining her TV reception!!

This is why I'm always super nice to these people.

Love this i anon.

I come to this page for the bitter passive aggressive snark, but this made me feel better about humanity, and human kindness is a wonderful thing.

This is a really nice I, Anon.

Mac Gruber, why don't you go walk across Aurora at night in a dark track suit.

NOT fake. Yes, customer service reps CAN be and sometimes ARE this nice. Other reps are pricks who accidentally drop the call on purpose (hello, Comcast?) It's almost as if they were actual human beings who run the gamut of kindness and decency...

I have some great – and some awful – customer service anecdotes. It is useless to paint all these interpersonal experiences with a single broad brush.

Some of the treatment reps endure from pissed-off customers during the course of trying to help those same pissed-off customers, is harrowing – And THAT was when cellphone customer service reps for Seattle providers were in BELLEVUE; before Mexico, India, etc.

After that, service went way down the sleuth in the race to the bottom of "cost reduction at any price" – customers be damned – we, ATT&T, Verizon, etc, need industry consolidation and MARKETSHARE."

It wasn't long before the Federal Trade Commission noted that cell phone providers were essentially on par, dubiously, with cable providers and auto dealers