Working with the general public can be a really eye-opening experience.

With a bit of experience though, you find yourself not to be so easily shocked by the oddness of fellow humans.

But for the call handler in this story, one call in particular really showed how stupid humankind can be.

Read on to find out what happened.

Never put your wife and your girlfriend on your lease

A couple of years ago I worked in a small inbound call centre for a fleet company.

Our department specifically handled calls from customers who had cars leased through their employers as part of their salary.

We had very strict privacy policy but (and this is the important thing) you could have more than one additional person authorised on the account.

So to the call of the day.

Let’s see how this standard call ended up being so dramatic.

A lady called up asking for access to the details of her husband’s lease. No problem, she had access and passed the security questions.

We went through a few details and I could tell from the start that she was fishing for something – and as soon as I opened the back leasing documents I knew what was coming.

It turned out that her husband had added his girlfriend onto the insurance and also as an authorised person on the account. Now we send the documents automatically to the email address held on file, which husband stupidly has as his wife’s email.

She knew but wanted to confirm in case it was mistake between accounts. I apologised and confirmed the information while she was crying. She thanked me and after a few more minutes ended the call.

But that story didn’t end there.

I thought that was terrible but shrugged and went onto the next call. But of course, that wasn’t the end of it.

A couple of hours later, the husband called, yelling and screaming.

Now I didn’t originally get this call but it went to the most junior member of the team, and being the next senior staff member under the manager she asked if I could take over the call for her (our manager was chill and let us do this for the juniors).

During the transfer he never stopped yelling until he realised he was speaking to someone else.

Let’s see how the conversation went.

He ranted and raved for a while until I security checked him and confirmed to him that he had put both his wife’s and his girlfriend’s details on the account, and that it was his decision to do so.

After he calmed down a bit, it came out why he was so upset (no sympathy, I think he deserved everything that happened to him).

It turned out that wife also worked for the same company – in a different department, but senior to him.

The first call she made was to her boss to make the company aware of the sitation and to have them check the company credit card. It seems old mate was also treating his girlfriend to dinner on the company dollar as well as other personal expenses.

Yikes! His wife wasn’t the only thing he lost as a result of his bad behavior.

He was summarily fired from his position. As the car was through the company, he no longer had a lease with us and had to pay the financier directly (it was not cheap) and lost all benefits included fuel cards, maintenance and insurance.

I could do nothing to help him, and by the time he called all this information had come through from his employer and was effective immediately (in fact, the documents were already in the post and had been emailed).

After calling her boss, it turns out wife had used the contact details she’d been sent to contacted her husband’s girlfriend, who was not aware he was married.

The girlfriend was apparently a little crazy, and went to his workplace and keyed the car and punctured the tires.

Uh-oh! This guy’s day just kept getting worse and worse.

Now he could fill an insurance claim because the policy wouldn’t cancel until midnight, but he wanted roadside assistance and replacement tires.

After about thirty minutes I got through to him that he wouldn’t be getting either, and would have to arrange it himself.

I also did recommend that he contacted the police.

He finally ended the call after berating me, my employer and his former employer. He also sent in an email complaint against me personally.

Let’s see how this call handler’s employers responded to the complaint.

My boss shrugged it off, the big boss shrugged it off and I continued to take calls.

I know the wife was satisfied because she signed up for a lease herself a few weeks later.

I spoke to her a couple more times while I still worked there. They got divorced, she got the house because it was premarital asset, and I think he deserved everything he got for his stupid actions.

This guy really did think he could have his cake and eat it too.

And, even more than that, he was an absolute fool.

A selfish fool.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

Some people were gobsmacked that someone would be so stupid.

But others explained that cases like this aren’t even that rare.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought this was classic karma.

The very fact that this guy made this ridiculous mistake says a lot about him.

But the real fact is that he was lying to everyone – his wife, his girlfriend, his employer – and he thought he’d get away with it?

What an idiot.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.