First impressions at work can be shocking.

In this story, an employee had just finished training and was taking his very first customer call.

He took his first-ever call, but he was shocked when the customer launched into a profanity-laced tirade.

It turns out the woman was complaining about a missing TV channel.

Check out the full details below…

The call that started it all.

It was April 21, 1998. I was just out of training pod at Dish Network.

Got myself comfortable at my new desk, logged into my apps, and got my notebook from training out and ready to reference.

Now, before I go any further, I want to set the scene a little bit.

People were still adjusting to satellite TV and were used to the relative “stability” of over-the-air TV and cable.

This was the time when TV programming meant some channels were getting removed from the lineup.

When satellite providers would do programming changes, just adding and removing channels from the lineup, customers were less than thrilled.

Something like this happened frequently with satellite TV in the early days.

One such programming change happened while I was in training.

This change removed some local television channels.

This man got a call from a woman who just started yelling and cursing at him.

Back to day one of taking calls.

I hit “Auto In”, waited for the beep, then prepared to deliver my intro.

Before I could even get to “Hello, my name is…,” out of this woman’s mouth came a solid minute of heavy breath.

She started cussing at me and the entire company.

Finally, she tells me that we took away Jerry Springer from her.

Yes, this woman was affected by the aforementioned programming change.

He almost quit after the call.

There wasn’t anything in my training to prepare me for this vitriol.

No knowledge base had a step-by-step of handling abuse like this.

Before the call was done, she actually threatened my life.

When I said I had to end the call, she screamed, “Jerry Springer” and hung up.

I almost quit after that call.

But instead, I ended up staying in call centers until 2013.

Let’s see how others reacted to this story.

Short and sweet.

This user had a similar experience.

Here’s another funny story.

Finally, here’s a valid point from this one.

Call center jobs teach you more about survival than training manuals ever could.

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