Finally lost it at work
I review bank chargebacks, which is essentially internet court. Basically, customers tell us what went wrong with their money, we tell whoever has the money to give it back, and depending on what they say, we approve/deny the chargeback or ask them to pay up one more time and hope it happens. It’s not a particularly fast or easy process for many reasons, and every day you’re working 100+ cases while taking calls from customers who are upset by default. Not sure how it is at other banks.
Anyways, I'm normally fairly good at talking to said customers, but this time someone calls because their chargeback was denied. A newer coworker who spoke to them before is calmly re-explaining their decision, but they aren’t listening and ask to be transferred to someone higher up. I happen to be one of the “higher-ups” in question as we’re supposed to avoid getting a supervisor when possible.
I read their documents and immediately see the problem: customer claims a ~$60 charge is fraud, but the merchant has an invoice showing a purchase for a winter coat. Made in January. They’re in Alaska and it was ordered to their address from a trusted device. All reasonable grounds for denial, so I get the customer (who is eager to tell me how unhelpful and apathetic the coworker was) on the phone and start to briefly recap. Before I can ask if their device was compromised, etc., and offer some possible solutions, they insist the charge is fraud and that the coworker is stupid. I ask for a hold to decide whether it’s worth it to keep pushing the case.
Now, I usually couldn’t care less about something as simple as being called stupid; we've all heard 10× worse and it wasn’t even directed at me. But what got me is that the coworker did perfectly acceptable work by the bank’s standards and risked getting thrown under the bus by their trigger-happy supervisor had they approved the chargeback (I know because I once had that supervisor). I muttered, “Why don’t you go herd some cows… whatever, we could probably still win on a good day,” before returning to the call to say the latter part in some more professional terms. Aaand I missed the hold button.
The customer is understandably angry, and I am sorry they had to hear me say that—then they started to insult my appearance (they can see my email icon) and say we don’t deserve our jobs, to which I became slightly less sorry. I was so dumbfounded I even let that happen that I could barely do anything but try to move the call on, and of course tell management immediately after so things didn’t get worse. I’ve never done anything like that and can’t believe it was over something so small. I guess the moral of the story is that if you’ve put your foot in your mouth at work, you’re not alone…