Fun with Customer Service

As a former customer service worker, I love hearing customer requests that fall outside of the bounds of normal routine. After hours of the same complaints over and over, every now & then you get one that just makes you giggle, mostly due to customer stupidity. The ones that truly make your day, however, are the ones where the customer can't do anything about the situation, yet try to have fun with it anyway.

Knowing that there's other folks still out there slogging in the trenches doing CustSat that feel the same way I do, well, I feel I owe it to them to inject a little humor in their lives.

There is an art to it, though...

#1 - It's gotta be real, or at least have a basis in reality. Making stuff up defeats the purpose.

#2 - To quote 'This Is Spinal Tap', "It's such a fine line between stupid & clever." Don't get too snarky. You do want them to take it seriously.

#3 - Always ask for something, either info, refund, freebies, whatever. The goal is to get a response. You know they "got" the joke when the response is subtly sarcastic.

Here's one I did recently. Not my greatest work, but it ought to be good for a freebie if it hits the right person.

How do you interpret your product ID code for expiration date?

I recently received about 2 dozen packages as a gift from my sister, and I think they might be out of date. Here's the code on the cheese cracker package. Front - XXXXXXXX & UPC code - XXXXXXXXXXXX
Here's the code of of a package of Toasty Crackers with Peanut Butter: Front- XXXXXXXX & UPC code -XXXXXXXXXXXX I only got 4 packs of the Peanut Butter type. I guess she preferred those, but as she basically subsisted on peanut butter and Wonder bread from 1976 to 1984, I'm not too shocked.

The cheese crackers seem kind of stale, but I usually eat another brand of snack crackers, so I can't say for certain how crisp you intend yours to be. Most manufacturers seem to aim for making very crisp crackers, but these seem to fall somewhere between the consistencies of rotten drywall and wet newsprint.

I doubt I will eat the peanut butter crackers, as the peanut butter filling appears to be changing colors. That may be just the oil separating out, but it looks really nasty. I did not notice this color change, nor the fact that the filling was oozing out of the side of the cracker sandwich until I had already consumed two out of the pack. Feel free to reassure your liability attorneys that I am doing well, with no ill effects that I can notice. I'm fairly certain the general malaise I'm experiencing is due to the lack of viable candidates in the current election cycle, and not any fault of the crackers.

Anyway, a little help would be nice here in determining whether my sister was being uncharacteristically nice, or just dumping spoiled food on her brother again. It's not like we're fighting over the parent's inheritance or anything, but with Christmas coming up, it's nice to have an equivalent standard of filial regard set in place before the gift shopping commences.
Right now, she's slated for a sack of coal and a box of stale crackers.

Thanks for your assistance!

Anyway, give it a try. Post your responses if you get them!