Are you serious?

I had a call from a customer on a car phone. Customer: "Hi there, on 25th May 2010 one of your guys came out to us as our server crashed and we lost a lot of data" Me: "A year ago?" Customer: "Yes, thing is one of our guys had a speeding ticket then and I've been out of the country and I've come back and had a summons! I have to be in court on 20 minutes" Me: "Er?" Customer: "Can you have a look back in the logs for when you came out and fax over a letter saying when you came out and confirming the data loss?" Me: "Firstly there is nobody here at the minute who can access the archives plus it would take longer than twenty minutes to get that faxed over but more importantly what has the server crash got to do with a speeding fine letter?" Customer: "Oh never mind I'll just have to go in without it" Please! Someone stop that, its trying to escape! I think its what little is left of my brain.

Why do people waste time and effort either sending a tirade of abuse to an email they have no interest in or, which is even worse, put extra effort into composing what they believe to be a witty message? Email from Prospect: "Your web proxy blocking box is an interesting idea however I've been sacked for following you on Twitter" Email from Me: "That's a real shame you should sign up with LinkedIN http://www.linkedin.com you could get a much better job with a better employer who appreciates a member of staff that uses every communication tool to promote their business for them. :-) Enjoy" Only one problem, I'm now just as bad as the people I'm moaning about. :-(

I've been doing an email template for a flier a customer wants to send, I've been doing it for two days now. Customer: "Its a bit big isn't it?" Me: "What do you mean big? I'm using the images you gave me, they'll determine the overall size in a sense." Customer: "I wasn't expecting it to be that size." Me: "Right I can resize everything but that means starting all over." Customer: "Can you make the font in the text box the same as the font on the images?" Me: "What font is it?" Customer: "I dunno I thought you would." Me: "But they are your images, hang on let me rummage around in my trousers I'm sure I have a crystal ball down there!" Customer: "Oh, erm, try Ariel" Luckily I know the guy, Muppet.

Customer: "Hi Pete can you tell me, are you doing our backups?" Me: "In what sense?" Customer: "Do you do them do you back our server up?" Me: "I suspect not but surly Simon in Yorkshire can answer that?" Customer: "He says he backs up his but not ours." Me: "Before they bought you out, when was that? Two years ago? Did you used to put tapes in?" Customer: "Yes but we stopped when they bought us." Me: "Why?" Customer: "We just assumed they'd sort it out, I have no idea where that tapes are by the way" Me: "So you've not had a backup for two years then?" Customer: "Suppose not." Oh dear looks like you'll need a new backup solution how about a snapshot automated with a cron job?

Our CRM database has been playing up for ages also I noticed we have a couple of thousand records that have not been touched in a very long time so set some mass call activities. As it turns out these have been set incorrectly the 'call' has been set across the range instead of for each individual record. Colleague: "Pete my task list is wrong they all say Rosie." Me: "Ah I see the problem, its my fault sort of, I've set a block activity relating to Rosie. I wanted individual calls. I'll clear that activity... Ooh its cleared the lot! Right just work through these records but don't change the lookup whatever you do." About an hour later. Colleague: "All my calls have disappeared!" Me: "What do you mean disappeared?" Colleague: "They've all gone from my lookup." Me: "Oh no I did say work from that look up and just move forward from each record, you've lost em." Colleague: "Where have they

I had an email from a customer about some tapes they bought from us asking if someone could give him a call as the backup drive refused to use them. Email to Colleague: "Hi can you give Anthony a ring as the tapes he bought are not working." Email to Me: "Telephone number?" Email to Colleague: "Try scrolling down this email, oh look theres his number." Perhaps I should make the call and put it through to you? And while I'm about it hold the phone to your ear?