Imagine working in a customer service role where you chat online with customers who have questions and problems.

What would you do if one customer kept asking the same question over and over again, somehow expecting you to be able to override a store policy?

The employee in this story knew it was important not to be rude to the customer on the chat even though the customer was really frustrating.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Policies are Written by People

I used to work as an online sales rep/customer support for a national electronics chain store.

Half of the job involved dealing with tech-illiterate customers and those who didn’t know the difference between a debit card and a credit card.

There were quite a few funny stories (and a few death threats) but this one kinda stood out for some reason.

As per policy, our returned/displayed products were (and to my knowledge still are) sold in-store, since the online listing only showed them as “scratched” or something similar, and because there was no return policy for those products, customers might want to know the exact conditions of the things they’re paying for.

Plus, it significantly hindered (but not completely stopped) those who claimed the products they bought were already broken before those got to them.

They share one particular customer interaction.

One day I was assigned a chat window that happened as followed (M – Me, C – Customer or another C-word).

M: Thank you for choosing [store name]! I am arceuspatronus. How can I help you today?

C: Why is there no delivery policy?

Alright, straight to the point. That certainly saved me some time.

They explained the company’s policies.

After getting the customer’s area and confirming that the product they were interested in was a used product (because we got paid by chat window and if we didn’t reach a certain amount of back-and-forth, we wouldn’t get paid for it even if we spent half an hour there), I proceeded to explain to the customer the policy I mentioned above.

You can probably guess where I got my title from.

C (after I explained everything): But why can’t you guys deliver to me?

M (thinking I somehow didn’t explain everything clearly): I apologize, sir, but as I explained above… [wrote a (self-proclaimed) great ELI5 paragraph]

The customer asked the same question again.

C: But why can’t you deliver?

M (slightly irritated now but being behind a keyboard tremendously helped masking it): I’m sorry, sir, but it’s the company’s policy.

C: Policies are written by people.

Now at this point I was beyond annoyed.

They tried to remain calm.

What did this guy want me to do? Rewrite the policies for him?

We literally couldn’t even place an online order for second-hand products to get picked up in-store.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that being rude or even closing the chat would get me in trouble (since even with death threats, we still needed to make the required amount of back-and-forth *before* saying things like “If you don’t need further assistance, I will be closing the chat now. Have a nice day!”).

M: I’m sorry, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?

The customer was not giving up.

C: Yes. Deliver this product to my house.

Oh, is that how you wanna play, Kenny?

M: I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t have the ability to connect you to those in charge of making policies.

C: Are you mocking me?

They had to think carefully before responding.

I definitely was, and I was phrasing it in a way that was quite clear to anyone who read the conversation, but if you really wanted to, you could argue that it was a genuine apology and I was just bad at social interactions.

I wanted to ask how he managed to mistake someone at the bottom of the hierarchy making minimum wage *after* bonus for the CEO, but like I said, being outright rude to customers would lead to my immediate termination.

I, however, didn’t like to lie, so I just ignored the question and tried to give myself an out in case I got in trouble.

M: I’m sorry, sir, but I can only connect you to tech support. Is there anything else I can help you with?

**C closed the chat.**

I understand the customer’s frustration, but he got his answer. The minimum wage employee is not the right person to ask to change the company policies.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Policies are not written by the people on the other end of the chat.

The customer is definitely not always right.

Seriously, this explains a lot!

I’m sure responding like this would end the chat!

That customer wouldn’t take no for an answer!

But I guess they’re not always right.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.