Sometimes the hardest part of customer service is making sure your mouth finishes the sentence your brain started.

So, what would you do if you were halfway through your usual polite script, but you shortened it at the wrong moment? Would you be embarrassed and hang up? Or would you laugh it off and continue with the call?

In the following story, one call center worker finds himself in this situation and chooses the latter.

Here’s how it all played out.

Accidentally let my apathy for the job slip.

I work in a call center, and if a question edges into legal territory, we’re supposed to direct the client to our free legal aid line.

This happens a bit, so the canned phrase I use is: “I can help, but I don’t want to give you the wrong information, so [enter prompt to confirm where they live to give the location-specific legal aid number].”

Anyway, I got a call yesterday right before the end of my shift, where instead, I said, “I can help, but I don’t want to.”

The client started laughing.

Pause.

Then I said, “…Wait, no.”

The client was laughing his rear off (and so was I as soon as I got the right sentence out), and I apologized profusely multiple times, so it all turned out well.

The client also admitted that he was ready to accept that answer, too! Like okay, guess I won’t be getting any help, bye!

Moral of the story: maybe remember to finish your sentences so you don’t sound like the rudest agent on the planet?

Nice! He got lucky with that one.

Let’s see if the people over at Reddit have ever done anything similar to a client.

This must’ve been awkward!

Hey! They said it first.

No lies detected.

Sometimes, it be like that!

Lucky for him, they were able to laugh it off and move on.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.