A decent day ruined by an hour of idiocy

How is it that the entire call center could have a decent day all the way up until 9pm and then suddenly enter The Fucktard Zone? This isn't anything that could be reliably predicted, mind you. It happens all the time, but there's no particular day or time. There doesn't seem to be any way to know when this is going to happen but, suddenly, starting at 9pm, I got five calls in a row about computer issues that had nothing to do with their ISP (me). Five people of well below average intelligence IN A ROW.

Then, the kicker, was a woman who had just gotten two cable boxes and neither were working. She had a third that was working, and even the first two outlets worked just fine plugged straight to the TV. First available appointment was 4 days out.

Now, first of all, when a phone rep says FIRST AVAILABLE, they don't mean "first available unless you pitch a fit like a three year old." They mean first available. If they could give you something earlier to get you off the phone, they would. That you decide to show just how immature and retarded you can be does not, in any way, help anyone.

By the way, for anyone out there that hasn't figured it out yet, an over the phone customer service rep's priorities are, in this order:

1.) Make the biggest paycheck possible with the least amount of work and
2.) Get each customer off the phone as quickly as possible without breaking any rules that would endanger the paycheck

You start out wanting to be helpful and wanting to make things better, but people in general will knock that urge right out of you within a few months.

So anyway, this woman was going on and on about how she wanted me to "send a signal" and "program the box" etc etc (people often make things up when they have no idea what they're talking about) when the box wasn't even booting. We went round and round with me telling her, over and over again, "If the cord coming from the wall is plugged in to the cable in, and the box has been plugged in for 20 minutes with no response, then there's nothing I can do. A tech has to come out, and you have the first available appointment."

How hard is that to understand?

It doesn't matter if you say "So I just got this box and now I have to wait?" It doesn't matter if you tell me how much money you pay for the service every month. It doesn't matter how long you've been a customer. None of that matters. It's as pertinent as telling me your curtains are blue, or stamping your feet and screaming, "But I don't want the sun to be hot!"

That's the way it is and nothing you can say will change it. Saying the same thing repeatedly will certainly not help.

Anyway, for maybe the 5th or 6th time in the year and a half I've been there, I had to hang up on her. The conversation was over for a good ten minutes before I did it, but that certainly didn't keep her from talking.

Well, the original point of this was to marvel at the fact that dumb people always manage to move in droves. The argumentative twits all call the call center at the same time. The non-tipping jerks always called the pizza places at the same time. How does that work? There has to be some sort of science to it.

So if anyone out there argues with tech support or stiffs the pizza guy, let me know if there's some sort of moronic collective out there or something. That way I can find it and destroy it.