Count myself "lucky" to encounter two dispute calls since the start of my work 2 weeks ago. I must have been so heng to get these type of calls because they put my reasoning skills to the test and stretch my tolerance for such unreasonable customer.
So one lady called in today and I guess the only way she speaks on the phone is to yell, shout, holler, scream, whatever you can think of. She made an enquiry and a request that I could not attend to because it doesn't fit the purpose of calling this hotline and it is not my responsibility to entertain such calls, but I attended to her request out of goodwill. Yes, goodwill can kill - and I got "killed" by the customer today all because of the little angel floating at the top of my head urging me to do something nice for her.
I did whatever I could to help the lady and all she said were,
"You don't understand what I'm saying!"
"Are you stupid or what?"
"You are not answering my question!"
Tell me how to not blow my top when she only converse by shouting? Fine, I kept my cool for the first 10 minutes of the verbally and emotionally abusive call. She even asked a very stupid question like,
"How come the country code of Hong Kong is 852 - 3 digits - while Singapore one is 65 - 2 digits?"
How the fuck would I know lady? I am not the head of whichever big company that decides the country code and decides how many digits would be in the country code! So I tolerated her a while more and replied her politely that I would not know the reason for this as it had already been determined like many many years ago.
After tolerating her nonsense and screams for the past 15 minutes for something stupid - like how I didn't read the number in one go (I mean, hey, I read out the number slowly to you to make sure that you get every damn number correct so you cannot have another chance to scold me!), I broke into sobs and it could be heard over the ultra-sensitive microphone attached to my headset. The lady apologized to me and used her age as an excuse ("I'm 55 years old and still have to work at this age. You are, what, 20 years old? I wish I was at your age working so it wouldn't be tiring"). She asked for my name and an email address that she can reach somebody because she wants to do this...
A commendation letter.
Seriously ma'am? I don't need your fucking commendation letter for all the emotional and verbal abuse you had put me through for the past 20 minutes of phone call. I know some people find 20 minutes is not long enough to count blowing your top and break into sobs but imagine a random old aunty approaches you in the MRT and start to yell at you for something you didn't do wrong... wouldn't you be furious?
I told her straight off my chest - even though I knew every call was recorded for audit purposes - that I don't want her commendation letter. Deep inside, the damage had already been done, period. I am already inconsolable and I haven't sobbed quite badly since the last time I cried at my aunty's funeral. Yeah, that's how bad my work day was during noon time. She apologized repeatedly for upsetting me and mentioned that I am "young and brave girl that could put up with her because she was so busy that she couldn't spare time to look up the company'c contact number herself". While she explained for her abusive behaviour, I would never bring myself to accept her apology by answering her.
Now I know how verbal abuse can destroy a person emotionally and how "sorry no cure" feels like. It is like slowly hacking a tree with each abusive word and to only apologize to the tree when it topples down with no more support from the root.
Nobody should ever be a victim of verbal abuse for something that they had not done wrong because everyone must be given the same amount of respect.
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