Re: Those in call centres
I can say will do anything but trigger their rage at being thwarted. I know my solemn duty is to keep them on the line for a long time, but I usually can't bear it.
Can't bear it?!? Hand in your BOFH badge now!
Just pretend to be a compilation of the worst traits of the worst suicide inducing users you've ever had inflicted on you to deal with. I actually had one scammer repeatedly screaming down the phone in frustration at me "following his directions" a little to literally. Well, it would have been if the Win98SE box running purely in my personal virtual memory (virtual nightmares, really...) was actually a real PC. Wasn't at a PC at the time so I improvised.
Scammer: "ok, goto type scammer.com into the address bar"
me: scammerdotcom says the page can't be displayed)
<5 mins of increasing frustration on his part>
me: Oh, you meant that "dot" should have been a full stop? Why didn't you say that?
Scammer: I DID SAY THAT YOU #%#$
me: <sob, hurt voice> but I'm just doing what your telling me to do, your instructions aren't very specific and I'm terrified that your going to leave my computer with this virus on it and etc etc etc...
He calmed down and was brought back to the brink another two or three times, lastly by the discovery that my "virtual" box was running win98 rather than vista or win7. Poor thing.
Ended up with their "supervisor" who made better progress, though IE 4 wouldn't display the website, they wanted me to send an RDC help invitation to get around that (on 98!?!) so eventually pushed them into realising IE4 was a bit old so tried to download firefox, which wouldn't run, "magically" let their 4th attempt at installing a different web browser to work before they gave up, then they had to talk me through uninstalling the AV, firewall, etc with reboots at each stage (and getting hung up on the old press any key thing to continue thing, I couldn't find it on the keyboard!) only to finally download their program and in their moment of triumph having finally got the program to run...
The piece de resistance...
Me: Yes! it's run. Oh. Was it meant to pop up that warning?
scammer #2: Yes, that's perfectly normal. Just click on yes.
Me: <upset> But it doesn't give up that option!
them: What does it say...?
Me: it says "A Fatal Exception of OE has occurred at 000, uh lots of numbers and "This application must be terminated" with a blue background.
Them: <fraught silence>
Me: <innocently> Was it supposed to do that?
I have heard a few phones slammed down on me in my career after telling people "no", but never one anywhere near that hard.