This story reminded me of an almost identical occurrence, except in person.

I’m having a face-to-face meeting with a client. The building starts to shake.

Client: “What the f*** is that!?”

Me: “That’s an earthquake, sir. The alarm will sound in a moment.”

Literally a second later, the evacuation alarm starts, ordering everyone to evacuate the building.

Client: “What do I do?!”

Me: “The evacuation muster point is the main square outside the building entrance.”

We both start walking to the door to the office. The client looks at me with a strange look.

Client: “Oh, you have to go too?”

This isn’t the Titanic, dude! It’s not clients and customers, first!

Related:
Quake It Or Leave It

I work in a role that requires frequent meetings with our teams based all around the world.

This meeting is with the team in the USA, and our team is based in Australia. This call takes place the day on the 4th of July in Australia, and because of the time difference, the USA team was about to finish for the day on July 3rd. 

This was the end of the meeting:

Coworker #1: “Thanks for your time, everyone. Have a great Independence Day and weekend.”

Coworker #2: “Dude, they are in Australia.”

Coworker #1: “Yeah, so?”

Coworker #2: “They don’t celebrate Independence Day, and it’s already July 4th there. They have Australia Day; remember they took the day off a few months ago?”

Coworker #1: “What?! Why?! That’s stupid! Everyone should celebrate Independence Day!”

It was quite an awkward end to the call for us.

I’ve been trying to explain to a customer that we can’t seat his no-reservation table-of-ten on a Saturday night immediately, and that it will be at least a ninety-minute wait.

Customer: “If you don’t get us a table in the next five minutes, I’m posting it to Facebook.”

Me: “Oh, would you, please? Look around, we’re so busy! We need to get the word out that we’re at capacity! You’d be doing such a good public service announcement to the community if you warned them just how popular we are!”

Going by his facial expression, that wasn’t the response he expected. Sadly, he didn’t leave the review on Facebook…

The software that we sell is not subscription-based, but buy once. They come with a year of free tech support. A caller is having an issue and needs to be walked through installing a patch update.

Me: “Okay, sir, as your product is older than a year, I’m going to need to bill your account $20 for this fix. Please acknowledge this and—”

Caller: “Excuuuuuse me?! I will do no such thing! You will help me for free!”

Me: “Sir, since you have an older version of the software and you’re choosing not to purchase the latest version, this is the only way to keep your product viable.”

Caller: “I have been a loyal customer for years, and you will do this for me for free!”

Me: “Sir, you’re using the 2008 version of our software and are trying to keep it running in 2025. You haven’t spent a penny on us for seventeen years. You options are to spend $550 on the 2025 version, or $20 to keep your current version on life support a little longer.”

Caller: “…Fine. But your program sucks anyway.”

Then why have you been using it for seventeen years?!

Me: “Thank you for calling [Bank], my name is [My Name], how may I assist you?”

Caller: “I need to dispute a charge. Do you have my account information?”

Me: “Yes, I do. What’s the date of the transaction?”

Caller: “It’s for $56.08.”

Me: “Okay, thank you, and what was the date of the transaction?”

Caller: “It was for Miss Stacy’s Antique Stores.”

Me: *Typing in the name of the merchant in the search bar.* “Thank you, and do you happen to remember the date of the transaction?”

Caller: “It’s in Tennessee.”

Me: “…Okay, I believe I found the transaction with the information you did provide.”

This call wasn’t that bad, but I found it funny that she would literally give me everything but the date. I don’t know why she wouldn’t just say she didn’t remember so I would stop asking.