This sub has too much negativity! Tell me your funniest call center stories.

When updating an address for a caller one time, he provides a p o box and out of habit I said “is that your mailing and physical address?” Without missing beat he said “why yes. We are taking the tiny house thing to the extreme”. He only held his composure for another second or two before we were both laughing so hard that I almost couldn’t finish the call. It was delivered so smoothly that I am literally laughing as I type this 6 years later.

i had a really bad cold and was losing my voice in the middle of a call. Iput the caller on soI could get some water, I came back onand the caller exclaimed "Wow! you sound like an entirely different person!"

It's dumb but I find it funny

I worked for a vision insurance company and had the most profanity laden call ever - but it easily falls into one of my most enjoyable. He wanted some "dope ass glasses" to help him get some "hot bitches", so I was helping him try on glasses virtually and educating him on all the upsells available on his plan. He was dropping 4 letter words left and right, but such infectious energy, I couldn't help but smile! He was a delight and a half. 4 stars. Would talk again.

Was trying to help and older client navigate our system and she actually typed out "God bless you but I'm way too old for this dumb ****, I think this is a sign I'll retire" and ended the chat. Sure enough she retired within a month.

What I was helping her with? Finding the spam folder on her email 🤣🤣🤣

This is from when I was in training for a call center job. Our training group was taking calls with coaches listening in. One guy in our group got this angry customer who was just ranting and wouldn't let him get a word in at all. Just steady complaining and rambling on for a long time. After maybe 15-20 minutes of not being able to say a word, the guy muted himself and asked if he could go to the bathroom. The coach took his headset and put it on in case the customer actually stopped talking for a moment. The guy literally went to the bathroom and came back and that customer was none the wiser.

I was in training for a medical cannabis dispo call center job during covid. I was answering calls in a common training room. I answered using my standard opening. This is so and so (first name only). Thank you for calling the dispo. The lady on the line starts loving me up on the phone and asking about my partner. I'm embarrassed to say it took me a minute to realize that I had been matched with a dear friend from my old life pre-pandemic who had recognized my distinctive voice immediately. We laughed about it, especially since we had smoked a lot of pot together back in the day, too. Lolol

Working in sales I met a bunch of cool and funny people. I left that job five years ago and these people are still in my life. We made that job so fucking fun. We didn't let the customers get to us. It was all one big roasting session with the boys.

I don’t remember much from everywhere I worked. I had a lady who sounded like my grandma who passed and had a very similar way of talking and laughing that warmed my heart

A funny story was when a mom had me and another agent on the phone (insurance) we were going over her daughters coverage and seen her age and we were like ‘omg she’s just a baby!’ Mind you she was like 8. Then in the sweetest angriest voice all we hear was ‘I’m not a baby!!!’ It was so funny

I worked in research (secret shopping) and everyone did QA while other had to make calls to companies and we had this one guy who would cuss up a storm when he was out on hold. It was hilarious and we always had to edit it out before we sent it to corporate, but he was such a vibe

Many moons ago, I did tech support for Dell. One of our sups comes up to me dying, laughing his ass off: "omg, just walked past Dave (not his real name) he's on the phone going "Sir, SIR! I need you to take your nuts out of your mouth!" Turns out the customer had put his screw nuts in his mouth while opening up his desk top and telling to Dave... 🤣

Also, when I did tech support for AOL (yes, I'm THAT old) got the call that I thought was an urban legend: while troubleshooting, dude starts to complain his "cup holder" is broken - his CD-Rom drive...

A sweet older lady calls in to ask about her next appointment…

Lady: I forgot when my next appointment is?

Me: It’s this Tuesday

Lady: What is it for?

Me: It says for memory issues.

Lady: Well I guess I better keep it then.

Next call was a guy calling in…

Me: Good morning, may I have your name, and date of birth.

Guy: gives information Are you a real live person? I mean are you a real human?

Me: Looking at myself I’m pretty sure I’m real.

I have way to many one of my favourite ones was the old lady wondering why her flip phone didn’t have a dial tone.

Had a super friendly customer with a relatively poor grasp of English, named He. Managed to get through the call and get him the information needed. Customer says "Great, thanks, just have to run this by my wife....She"

Dude barely spoke the language and totally nailed it

One of my favourite callers so far was an older woman who was trying to arrange a service call.

We had an incredibly bad connection and she was driving, so I misheard her name a bunch of times. What she eventually said was: "Verba! I'm a verb, not a noun!"

Made my shift tbh. Verba, I appreciate you and your patience.

People call in forgetting their login, some funny ones were Ourcompanysucks and Fuckedyourmother. And no, I did not hesitate saying it after verification.

I got a call from someone wanting information on a guy named David. She knew she had an accent so she was spelling out each letter. She actually tells me:

“David. As in, D for David. A for Adam. V for Victor. I for Isaac. D for David.”

Oh yes. Morale of story. Do your due diligence before calling for help.

Customer called into the place where I work to report debit card fraud. States there was this unknown charge and it wasn't hers and she was freaking out because it was a false charge and someone stole her card information. I follow due diligence and identify the charge the customer had. The merchant name was a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers so it wasn't very easy to identiy straight up what this merchant was. I ask the woman to let me place her on hold to do some research.

Pull up my browser and search the name of the merchant and the city it was located in. Lo and behold the merchant terminal was located at a relatively well known adult store.

I take the customer off hold and ask her if she's familiar with the store name. For someone who was frantic and panicking and swearing up and down this wasn't her purchase, she was quiet for a good 10 seconds, then becomes very meek and understanding and was very quiet for the rest of the conversation after realizing what it was.

Needless to say we didn't close the card down as the charge was in fact authorized.

The level of professionalism to talk with this customer without laughing has built my self control exponentially. I will never forget this call.

I remember this one time i took an edible. Now i don’t partake in those activities. So i took it.. Didn’t feel anything (like i was expecting) so i ate the other half. Wouldn’t you know it the phones started ringing. There i was…. At work high as heck and just stuck! I still have no idea what happened….

My humor never matured past 12, so while I can't think of a specific call right now, I enjoy any call where I get to talk with a customer or field employee about caulk. Especially if they sound awkward about it.

There are also, I think they're plumbing parts, called nipples. So occasionally I get to sell nipples to people. I also remember helping to special order a part and I wish I could remember what it was, but it had bastard in its name.

Omg. I wonder if, like me, Mike had ever failed to confirm that the mic was actually muted before going off.

I am Mike at my workplace lmao

I’ve had a few people ask about getting their government checks after they die.

I still can’t believe that I had to tell people that the government doesn’t pay money to dead people. I even had a guy ask why. ….Because dead people don’t buy anything?

Not me but one of my colleagues. One of the security questions was marital status. She replied: "widowed, thank God". When he asked if he'd been ill, she replied "nope, just hated his guts".

My own personal blooper was when I meant to ask a recently homeless woman if she was sofa surfing but instead asked her if she was "bed hopping".

While having a customer read out their VIN number for me, they didn’t know the phonetic alphabet, so they were saying things like “A as in Apple.” They got to “U” and paused, I was expecting umbrella, or something along those lines. This guy goes “U as in…. Hell I don’t know Uterus.”

I fell out laughing, I was not expecting that, the customer started laughing too, and that was the ice breaker we needed to get the conversation going. Ended up selling the policy to him, and that was one of the last customers I helped that day before I got off. Still one of my favorite memories from my sales days.

I was getting a postcode from a lovely friendly woman, it had LD in it so she said 'LD as in uhhh Larry David'. When the call ended I said the usual 'take care and have a lovely day' and she replied 'thanks love you too'.

It was wholesome enough to make my day!!

I used to work for comcast(before they changed to xfinity) and I got a call from a really cool guy who has his own show called Garden Time. He totally reminded me of Tim The Tool man Taylor. Those who remember Home Improvement will understand the reference.

I used to work at a call center that did tech support for truck drivers ELDs. When you call in, you have to go through several prompts and wait on hold for a bit, the hold music would be constantly interrupted by a voice thanking them for calling the company. In this particular day there were maybe 6 agents working since many called out sick (height of Covid). This one guy went through the prompts, waited on hold for a minimum of 20 minutes and when he got through. “Oh, I thought this was pizzaplacenextdoor then hung up.

I have 2 good ones. The first one was a call to add a product to our system. I work for a major pharmacy chain. As I’m collecting information (NDC, manufacturers, etc) I got to the part where I needed the name of the product. She goes “uh, I can’t make this shit up”. I immediately expected something wild like the cocaine topical or something. She goes “monkey butt powder” and busted up laughing. I did confirm via the image she had to send me, and laughed with her when I figured out she was serious.

The second one this dude called in frantic as fuck because a specific medication was not going through a 3rd party. I realized it was a large quantity of a gonorrhea medication. He said “this shit isn’t for me. Every horse at the Kentucky derby contracted gonorrhea”. Idk why I found that shit as funny as I did, but I had to mute myself. Those horses were on some wild shit that year.

Honorable mention: had to confirm a ladies name with a different company years back. She goes “can I give you my middle name instead of my last?”. No ma’am, I need the name on file. She sighs and says “gloryhole, it’s fucking gloryhole”. Yep, my mute button has saved me a few times. This one is yet another solid example.

I worked for a health insurance company for a while. One day, an older fellow called me up about his impending colonoscopy and said, "Son, they're about to look up my behind with one of them telescopes. Yall gonna pay for that?"

This o es kinda funny..

My colleague had a caller looking for the balance of her credit card.. However.... the account was very clear our BOSS! Who was sitting right across from us. Diane said she could her the caller rustlingthrough papers looking for the right answers to her questions. Meanwhile we were putting a lock on the card and another person was calling the fraud team , good to catch her in the act.

Now I think about it, this could have been after the stupid boss fell for a passport renewal scam, paying a company 50 quid to fill out and send off the form....

Customer was looking for a pen to note stuff down, and said, 'no, that's an acorn.' I think her kid left random acorns around the house.

I had a guy arranging to have his personal belongings returned to him from his car and he asked us to deliver an egg sandwich that had been sitting in the footwell for a week.

I worked for a bank and this guy called in he thought we were a swimming pool company. we are not a swimming pool company we are a bank. I told him this numerous times and he was not convinced, took over 25 minutes to convince him that we were not a swimming pool company

Granted I was getting yelled at, but I tried calming down the member and advising they could do a grievance. The member was down for it and asked to speak to the grievance department.

I was all “oh… no you can’t talk to them. You’ll have to tell me what’s wrong and I’ll tell them and they’ll write to you a response” I know they were truly upset but the way they were all “what the f-?!” Just had me cracking up laughing internally. I understand the grievance process doesn’t make sense either to me.

Whwn I used to work the customer service line for a certain cell phone carrier, I had a co-worker who we shall call Jim. Jim didn't take shit and usually replied back at angry cx. I remember when he got an angry cx, he would sit and listen to them rant. Once the cx was done yelling, Jim would always reply "are you finished?" One time the cx asked for a manager, and Jim said "yeah that's me"

Another time, he was talking to an upset cx who was being rude, the cx asked where Jim was located. Jim replied, and then told the cx "you wanna come?" And told the cx that he will be waiting for him to visit. He never was discovered by QA or any supervisor. He had that luck.

Ooh ooh. I have a favorite. (not a favorite for another rep, I'm still apologizing to them to this day when I think of it.)

2013 or thereabouts, we were contracted to Verizon, for mobile and network tech support.

A lady called in needing assistance in changing her ringtone as it went off while she was in church. Her choice of ringtone? Samuel L Jackson's "ENGLISH, MOTHER FUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT!?" I ended up hearing that line so many times on that call, and each time I sat up straight in my seat.

It was roughly a two-hour call, but for whatever reason* the phone would not give up that ringtone. I decided to call the phone manufacturer's customer support and get them in on it. Now this entire call, she was so sweet and polite to me, but that poor Rep at the phone manufacturer, she chewed him out because we couldn't get the issue resolved. She decided to visit her local Verizon store to see if they could assist.

A few days later, one of the supervisors informed me Verizon had an *app that superseded the default phone settings, and the ringtone would have needed to be changed there. We had no documentation on it. (Wheeee.)

tldr: Spent a couple of hours effectively being cursed at by (a recording of) Samuel L. Jackson. It's one of my quasi-favorite (again, sorry phone manufacturer tech support rep.) memories of working at a call center.

I worked for a hotel reservation call center for at least 5 years. We had some pretty interesting calls from all over the country. 1. When I got to talk with sissy spacek 2. Asked this women what brought her to the city? She said “ovulation “ 3. Older women wanted several rooms close to each other and a Christmas tree in the room. Her reservations were for July. She said she was told by doctors that she might not live much longer and wanted one last Christmas with her family. 🥲

I do a damn fine ahnold impression. I once after getting q ad called California on a political survey asking about the campaign where he had just got re elected.

I made myself and my nearby co workers fucking die with laughter.

I'm reasonably certain 3 people thought I was actually Schwarzenegger

I had just recovered from a fever and still had some residual cough , I coughed ,apologised and muted myself for 30 seconds , immediately after I was back , the lady calling said “You poor thing , are the ass***s making you work despite you having Covid ? And also asked me to transfer to my manager if I wanted her to put a word in on my behalf ,she also recommended warm ginger tea with honey ,it was such a sweet interaction, I informed my evaluator and he listened in and had a laugh … you do get some sweet ones from time to time

Funny.... How about a heartwarming one for once?

Got a call from this... Building worker who was calling in for his sick girlfriend (who was an absolute bitch by the way) and he was calling to reload her minutes.

So we go through the process but there was an issue with the system so I put him on hold for a few minutes but since my AHT was so high I put him on mute.

Then I hear him talking to his dog saying: "Yes we love phone company dont we?" In the nicest way ever.

When I got back I thanked him for his patience and he was super thankful it was so fast and painless. He even apologized for his girlfriend's rude behavior because she was sick (sick my ass, she's just a bitch dude!) and I say its nothing.

Then he says: "Hey can I talk to your supervisor please? I wanna let them know what a wonderful job you're doing!"

So we do just that, and the timing could not have been better! We had some power hour thing going on where you'd win goodies and what not if you get a good call. So with this caller he won me a huge bag of M&Ms and a 2 dozen packs of Pringles!

But thats not the end. He asked for me again and we had a nice casual chat about anything under the sun! The call was fast so I still had AHT to spare and this guy was just so relatable on so many levels!

Your mute button master made me think of this guy

Talking to famous people is fun from reality stars to legit actors.

I work technical support and there is one caller who calls in alot and some how with over 200 different agents he always gets me so we got lots of inside jokes.

I used to work on a hotel reservation account, so it was common to attend same costumer time to time but no regularly so, one day I got a call from a lady she was nice she mentioned she was on vacation I think visiting her Family so it was on a Saturday and rsv was made at New Mexico all nice all great, she was a nice caller.

Then next day (on Sunday) I give my greeting and it was same lady and she was like "OMG I think I spoke with you yesterday" and she was like you now I'm doing fine, tomorrow I'm arriving at Sis' home (something kike that) so I completed the reservation this time in California and I thought ok that was random but funny, I thought that was the end but...

On Wednesday I received the call and it was her once again Hahaha, and I gave my greeting and she recognized me at once and she was speaking with someone at her end but when she realized it was me she started laughing and she was like "You know I had this good guy already 2 times already" and I completed reservation at New Mexico so she was going back home and this time she was like "you know I already spoke with you 3 times, don't you have a supervisor for me to share a compliment" so I passed to "a supervisor" and got a compliment

Two come to mind.

First off, the woman bitterly complaining we sent the wrong item. She ordered a size 36D sports bra and received a pair of size 13 basketball shoes. “I’m sorry that happened, but the warehouse obviously made an error. But just imagine the reaction of the guy who was expecting basketball shoes and gets a sports bra!” That got her laughing, and all was fine after that.

Second, just before Christmas, parents received a personalized authentic NFL jersey for their son, but the name was one letter off from FUCHS. They were understandably not happy, and I had the unpleasant task of informing them there was absolutely no way we could rectify it in time. “But here’s what you do. Go ahead and wrap it up, make sure you get a picture of your son’s face when he unwraps it, then explain that we goofed but the correct jersey will arrive shortly.” “Oh, that’s a great idea! This is going to be the best Christmas ever!”