Eight December Drabble

Katie had always hated to work with customer support. She hated to be the one to make people upset, kill their hope or even make them burst into tears. Of course she also got the chance to help people, but that didn’t change the fact that she felt like crap every time she had to turn someone down. Like only this morning, for instance. She had answered her phone and a middle-aged woman had answered, inquiring about one of their products.

“So you can see my order then in that computer of yours?”, the woman had asked.

“Yes, that's right m'am, so what is the issue you are having?”

“Well I only bought the one thing...”, the woman said and paused.

Katie was unsure if she was meant to answer to that or if the woman on the other end of the phone was simply hesitating, throwing around for words or thinking of how to express it the best. To be on the safe side she responded anyway. “Yes, I can see that.”

“Good... good..”, the woman responded absent-mindedly. “Well, the ruddy thing is broken, that's whats my issue, it wont turn on!”

“I see”, Katie replied. “And you made sure it wasn’t the batteries, tried with a different pair?

“I did that, yes, still no luck.”

“Well, in that case, I'll just have a package sent to you, free of charge of course, so that you can send it back to us, and we'll send you a new one.”

“Hrmpf... I was rather hoping that you would tell me how to repair it!”, the woman responded, rather grumpily.
“I'm sorry m'am, I'm no engineer, the best I can do is get you a new one.”

“Well”, the woman continued. “I screwed up the back and looked around to see what the problem could be, but I couldn’t make any sense of it whatsoever!”

Katie suddenly focused on the conversation more. Not again. Crap! “You... screwed it open, m'am?”

“That's right!”

“I'm sorry to say this – but that voids the warranty, it specifically says so in our terms of agreement.”

“So what?”, the woman retorted. Sounding rather aggressive now.

“So... that means that I cant help you after all. You have broken your part of the agreement, hence we cant fulfill ours.”

“That's rubbish that is! You're meaning to say you’re not going to replace this broken piece of crap?”

“I... I guess that's what I'm saying yes. I'm so sorry, but there's really nothing I can do, m'am.”

Katie then heard as the phone was thrown back on the receiver with a bang. It made her jump on her chair. With a sigh she straightened her headset, looked at the flashing buttons, but ignored them and instead went to the machine to get a cup of tea. This would be one of those days....

Word of the day:

rescind

Wordcount: 497

Fun factor: 2/5