Phil 33 1/3: The Final Insult

[u/SilentDis]

Things continued swimmingly with Phil for the next few months. I could handle him, and I was his only contact at our company.

Most of his calls were still entirely outside our support boundries; he had a horrible time with printers, scanners, fax machines, and at one point his fridge that he was sure was Internet related. Every time, I came down with the same firm response of 'Nope, we don't help with that. Our stuff works, here's the number to talk to.'

I remember a few issues that I actually did help him with, but they were exceptionally few and far between.

Once, he'd manually renewed his domain through a 3rd party (saving himself $10 or so on our renewal fee), and he'd then given them incorrect pointer info, hosing his domain horribly in the process. I did the expeditious thing and just took responsibility on that one; got the phone number for his support company, and 3-wayed him and myself in with them. Phil verified security, and then handed off to me. I efficiently listed off the A and MX records we needed, the other tech made the change, and we were done in less than 5 minutes... I then took 15 minutes to explain to Phil how he's now waiting 48 hours for it to propagate down. This set him off a bit, but I countered with the fact that he wanted to save the $10 and take all of it away from us, and that was fine, but that's what he'd have to deal with. It shut him up, quick.

Another time, he installed AOL and hosed himself. It was an older version that would bind itself up in weird and interesting ways to the various network adapters, causing no end to headaches for connecting with anything other than AOL. I again explained to him that I could make XYZ work, but he was on his own with AOL, and if it happened again, we'd just keep breaking AOL to make XYZ work; if he wanted better, talk to AOL or ditch them.

This got frustrating to Phil. He couldn't have his rousing hour-long bitch-fests in which he'd make people cry; or make people question the life choices that lead them inexorably to dealing with their lord and master, Phil. Basically, I wasn't 'fun' to call, because I had the answers, and the process down to an art.

So, once the shiny of 'having my own tech to abuse' wore off, he started calling the general helpline again. Usually, after being told to take his printer problem elsewhere from me. There was a big flag on the account indicating that he didn't get support from anyone but me, and sometimes he just found himself cold-transferred to either my voice mail or to my line if I was in. That was perfectly fine by me, not to Phil of course, who'd just hang up when he herd my voice and re-call the main line. I knew it was him, though, as our Caller ID system was sweet in that it kept original data through cold transfers. I'd just make a note that he'd called and hung up.

After a time, though, he would badger someone else on the helpline long enough to get them sucked into a call with him. I'd gotten few, if any actual calls from him lately. At first I chalked it up to 'Oh, I finally clue-sticked him into understanding', but upon checking his account, I saw other tech's logs popping up, at weird hours when I was out of the office.

Thing is, they knew they were supposed to dump him on me. They knew they were supposed to not help him in any way. But, there it was, plain as day. sigh

I mentioned this to my supervisor, and he did his best to put a stop to it. E-mails, coaching cube-side with the other agents, etc. It was brought up at our monthly meeting, in fact (all techs for 2 hours in 1 room to go over general things like this, while Tier2 took calls directly); and stated in no uncertain terms that Phil doesn't get help from us, you dump him on this extension. Period.

It helped little. Many of you who've worked in tech know there's always a few low-hanging fruits in the group that just drag everyone else down. When you have 75+ agents, it's bound to happen. As good as management was about weeding these people out, they still managed to hang on, thanks to a corporate environment.

Of course, Phil pushes and pushes, and I have to give him credit where credit's due; he'd manage to suck a good number of people into his little game of 'make the tech rip their hair out'. Eventually, he'd not call me anymore, because he found it much more fun to scream at the brick wall, or attempt the fun whack-a-mole game of finding the one bad (or poorly informed) tech to torment.

He got one, eventually. She was a new-ish hire, so I can't blame her entirely. On the floor for 2 weeks, and now reduced to a puddle of tears in the middle of the isle. She quit that day. I knew what happened even before I'd been told directly, and I was furious. I felt like I had personally let her down (regardless of the fact that she didn't heed the rather interesting special note and popup that his account generated... the only account that, when you pulled it up, would also pop a full-screen bright red box with 40pt white type that told you to direct the customer to me and not help them).

The next day, my supervisor called me into an unused meeting room 1 floor up. I was greeted by the director of the help desk, the lead Tier2 agent, the telecom hardware director, and the system administrator (who managed the webhosting servers/email servers/etc). I'd met all these people, and they were really decent folk; but I'll be honest, I figured they'd decided to blame me for the whole Phil situation that happened the day before to that poor girl, and I was getting the axe.

Another person in expensive suit and tie walked in, and I was introduced to the CIO of XYZ, Incorporated. Fuck.

They started out asking how I felt about the whole situation. They all knew I wasn't one to pull punches, that I was very blunt, and when cornered, rather crass.

I believe the first thing I said to this meeting of the big-wigs was "From what I can tell of the people gathered here today, I'm the lucky fuck who gets to have this shit storm hung around his neck, and you intend to each take an arm to make sure I land squarely under the bus?" I ooze class when I'm cornered, I admit it.

Deafening silence ensues. It lasts a good few minutes. I take stock of the faces in the room from my little tirade; the systems guys are eyes wide, but bemused. The CIO is slack-jawed (I don't think he's herd such an honest/crass combo before, cool). My floor supervisor is hiding his mouth in his hands, attempting not to show his laugh. Meh. Let the fireworks begin, I'm going down with a bang, not a whimper in this one, I've decided.

The system administrator pipes up "Umm... Actually... No. But, I can see how it'll look that way."
"Well, that's all fine and dandy, could you clue me in before I go ahead and shoot my other foot, then?"

This got a laugh out of my floor supervisor, and the tensions eased considerably. The CIO cracked a smile, as well.

"Since you appear to appreciate bluntness, I'll return it in kind," the CIO said. "You're not fired. We are, on the other hand, attempting to decide what to do about Phil."
"Since I'm not fired, and all these people are here, and you all know what Phil has done, I'd say it's pretty obvious 'what to do about Phil'. He doesn't have more than a few thousand dollars a year in profit for this company, yet he's monopolized my time, and made a rather sweet new girl quit. He is a horrible person, and should be kicked to the curb." Why sugar coat the obvious.

"That was our thought, too," began the telecom director. "But, we figured we'd try one other option. Would you consider going 'on call' for Phil? As in, we'd route his calls to a cell phone that you'd have 24/7."
"That depends, how big of a raise are you offering me to go with that?"

Everyone has their price, even me. I'll deal with Phil 24/7, but it's not going to be cheap.

"Well, we wouldn't be able to bump your paygrade..." began my floor supervisor.
I cut him off. "Then that's not happening, is it."

This illicited a chuckle from the CIO. "I like you, right to the point and honest. But, you are going to make the call to Phil to tell him we're giving him the boot."
"After what happened yesterday, I'd be a little pissed if you didn't give that to me, considering."

And so it came to pass. A registered, signature required special delivery went out that very day, containing a legally-drawn up end-of-service notice. I was given the tracking number, and watched it like a hawk. I knew when it was signed for, and I even had a little digital copy of Phil's signature to prove it. I gave him a half hour to read it, then called him up.

Me: This is SilentDis from XYZ support calling. Is Phil available?
Phil: Um... this, this is Phil. (He sounds... hurt. How touching.)
Me: Phil, I am calling on behalf of XYZ to confirm the contents of the letter you signed for half an hour ago. We are terminating any and all services you have with us, due to the abusive nature of your calls. Do you understand?
Phil: You can't do this! I pay my bills on time, why would you do this? Do you know how much money you'll lose every month?

This little tirade continues for a good 5 minutes. It's normal Phil, though. A little pop-up appears in the corner of my screen from my on-floor supervisor. Apparently, 3/4 of the help desk, and much of the upper management is currently listening in. I respond back "fuck you, I don't want a goddamn audience" which earns me a distant guffaw from over the cubicle farm. I mute myself as he's continuing to rant and shout "Don't you people have anything better to do?" A chorus of chuckles and "No!" rings back.

Phil eventually runs out of steam on his rant. He's not switched to legal threats yet, as that was never his way, amazingly enough.

Me: Phil, this is exactly why we're terminating our services with you. You are abusive, you are rude, and you do not listen. You cost us in man-hours more than what we make from the services we provide. To top it off, you made a rather nice person quit her job after 2 weeks. XYZ has decided that you are a liability to provide service to, rather than any sort of benefit. Your service will terminate tomorrow at midnight. At that time, we will make a final copy of your website, and of any e-mail sitting on our servers, burn it to CD, and send it to you via the same carrier we used to deliver the notice you received today. I would still recommend backing it up yourself."
Phil: "I don't know how to do that, I shouldn't have to! This isn't..."
Me: "Phil, it is right, it is fair. We, as a company, simply no longer wish to do business with you. It's fine if you do not know how to backup your site, we're doing it for you anyway, and you'll get the CD in the mail. Please understand, we will no longer help you with anything going forward, calls to this number will go unanswered, and we will not sell new service to you. This call isn't to help you with anything, it's simply to inform you. Good day."
Phil: (he actually managed to respond just before I pushed release. very meekly) "Yeah, bye." click

The next thing I hear is thunderous applause from across the help desk. The queue was basically forgotten, and had stacked up to the 20s, but it didn't matter. Phil was gone.

We actually had a pot-luck party the next day, in celebration. I brought a pie.

TL;DR: Mmm. Pie.

[u/diablo75]

To the front page with you! That was a fantastic series of stories.