“I worked at an Australian telephone company, and the biggest, most hated one at that, Telstra. I was 21 and an assistant manager of the store. I often copped a lot of angry, yelling customers bit this one lady takes the cake.
She walks in, in a huff and ignores the line of customers at the counter, and just yells, ‘I WANT TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER! NOW!’
So I walk out from the office, behind the middle counter, and ask her to please come forward and I’ll do my best to assist her with her issue.
Well this prick, SLAMS Her bill down on the counter with the force of a thousand suns. She jumps straight back into yelling, simultaneously asking me to ‘EXPLAIN THIS TO ME’ while not giving me a chance to talk.
I try pretty hard for about five minutes to get a word in, and the whole time she is just yelling, foot-stomping, jerkily gesturing to her bill and how we were robbing her blind, and she never made these calls, never used that data, who do we think we are!
All the customers and staff have now stopped and are now staring at this lady, she seems very aggressive and some of the male staff from out the back have come near the counter in case this lady tried to get physical.
Her ranting continues, now at the customers, telling them not to shop here, that we are thieves and a horrible company.
After she seems to be all yelled out, she leans across the counter and gets in my face, and asks me ‘What are you going to do about this?’ And shoves her bill in my face.
I took a step back, and calmly responded, ‘Nothing’
Lady is SHOCKED. she is flabbergasted! After all her efforts of yelling and scene-making, I, the manager of this Telco store wasn’t going to bend to her will?
She inhales deeply, ready to go on another explosive rant, face red and eyes squint when I interrupt her and calmly ask,
‘You do realize this is an Optus bill? And you are in a Telstra shop. Now if you are quite done, I’d like you to leave now please.’
Somehow she looked…..even angrier? Embarrassed? So red-faced. She took her bill off the counter and stomped out of the store.
The whole store was quiet for about, five seconds? Then everyone went back to their inquiries and resumes their day as per usual.
We were the biggest Telstra store in the city, so we did get aggressive people every so often, but this lady I will always remember. Apparently, she didn’t know how to read or something. Still feel sorry for the poor Optus rep that had to deal with her.”
