I Eat at 5 o'clock

by Susan Walls
(Newark DE)

I worked in a call center for a bank for a number of years. Most of our customers were elderly, and some had hearing difficulties, and other life challenges.

One day I asked one of my representatives to call one of our customers for some additional information to complete the customer's financial transaction.

Shortly after the call began, I heard our employee repeated asking our customer the same question.

Our rep said she asked the woman her name, and the customer kept asking her to repeat the question.
Finally, as politely as she could, she yelled the question, and quickly thanked the customer and said goodbye.

When I asked her if she got the information we needed, she said all our customer would say was: "I eat at 5 o'clock."

And then there was the "bee lady." She would call about every other day, and tell us (the bank), that the bees were after her and we needed to send someone.

And for years, every afternoon, a woman would call us to ask the time. We finally just stopped telling her we were a bank, and provided the time report.