Most who know me would agree that I’m a fairly patient person, at least when it’s my temper that’s concerned.  I’m by no means a saint, in fact I’ve been known to rage in the comfort of my own home on numerous occasions.  It’s in my dealings with others face-to-face where I seem to shine.  I’ve on occasion had red wine spilled on me, had soup dumped in my lap, and had on many an occasion the most socially challenged person to deal with over the most trivial of transaction.  And everytime, I feel as though I’ve demonstrated a copious amount of courtesy and restraint.

That’s not to say that I don’t have a little freak out once I’ve left the room, but in the face of common human differences and errors, I think I do a damn good job of treating my customer service technicians with the best of my behaviour.

That was until today.

It was reconfirmed to me today why I left TD Bank so many years ago.  As a member of their institution for most of my life, there simply came a day when I realized that paying $18 a month for a simple chequing account was not for me.  I stayed on as a Visa holder and to this day haven’t had to deal with any of their frustrating and useless customer service representatives.

Impersonality is, perhaps, one of the hardest hurdles to breach in big corporations, but you’d think that when you are dealing with people’s cash–their savings and their livlihoods–you would put the customer relationship at some sort of paramount level.  You’d think as one of Canada’s largest financial institutions that they would have a certain degree of foresight.  You would think that after this many years of experience that they could see the value of a customer relationship for what it is.  Apparently this is far from the truth.

So after an hour on the phone (a large degree of that on hold), a disconnection, a redial (by me), more hold time, an an eventual response that entailed “We cannot help you access the internet, you’ll have to go to your nearest branch with two pieces of id,” I lost my cool.

The poor fellow on the other side of the wire, who has no doubt been given no empowerment in his position, and simply has to redirect people from one place to the next, was unfortunately the victim.  An ex-partner of mine once worked in a call-center, and would certainly agreed that I had indeed “escalated,” rather, the point at which the customer reaches a level of such frustration and anger that the operator has no choice but to transfer them to the next in command.  Unfortunately, I didn’t give the fellow the chance, and simply hung up the phone.

And for a moment it felt good.  It was refreshing and cleansing to get that off my plate.  I managed to squeeze a couple more obscenities into my day.  I managed to give the operator another story to tell their spouse when they returned home that evening,

“God I hate this job, this one guy today, fuck was he pissed…”

I managed to do all these things while I should have been quietly sitting and studying.

All this, while at the same time completing absolutely nothing.  Not one thing was accomplished and the only person who benefited from my phone call in the first place was my cell phone provider, who no doubt appreciates my generous use of my day time minutes.

God Damn It!!