“Well, Terminate It, Then”: Karen Doesn’t Expect Employee To Actually Terminate Their Call After She Dares Him
Interview With Author
Putting a Karen in her place is every service worker’s dream, but they usually can’t do anything about a rude customer without receiving punishment from management. But if they get a chance to maliciously comply, they will take it and it will feel good.
The lucky person who gladly fulfilled a Karen’s request knowing it would benefit him more than her and wouldn’t cause him trouble was Reddit user ithinkitmightbe. He was thrilled to hang up on one when she dared him to do it.
More info: Reddit
When a Karen tells you to hang up, you have no choice but to do it
Image credits: Northwest Retail (not the actual photo)
The Original Poster (OP) works for an electronics company and his job is to do sales over the phone. The company was very serious about fraud and allowed the employee to make sure that the person placing an order is the account holder.
Bored Panda reached out to the Reddit user and explained to us why even if he did make the order, it wouldn’t work, “If I had of completed the transaction, more then likely the bank would not have authorized the transaction as the name on the credit card being used did not match the name on the invoice. The invoice information is sent as part of the transaction to the bank along with CC number / exp / CVC as well as address. If those details don’t match, banks generally wont authorize the transaction. Some certainly do get through, but us as well as the banks do try to minimize the number of fraud transactions.”
All of these rules and explanations don’t really work with Karens and when you work with customers, it is inevitable that you encounter them, or rude and stupid people in general.The OP told us that actually, he can sense if a person is a Karen right away, “It’s very easy to, your tone of voice over the phone plays a big impact. Just like when you’re in person your body language says a lot about you, over the phone your tone of voice says it all.”
The author of the post worked in an electronics company and handled sales over the phone, which meant there were measures to prevent fraud
Image credits: u/ithinkitmightbe
If you are more of a sensitive person, dealing with Karens will ruin your mood or make you reconsider your career path. But this time the story has a satisfying ending.
The employee got a call from a woman wanting to place an order. Both of them went through the security protocol of checking personal information and the payment method. Before finishing the order, the woman told the OP that the card she would be paying with was her dad’s and asked if it would cause problems.
This was an issue and the employee explained that if her dad was the account holder, he needed to place this order himself, and the Karen didn’t take it well. She cussed at the OP and called him names and the question is, why would she ask the question if she didn’t think it would be a problem and if she sensed that it could be a problem, why did she become so aggressive over it?
A Karen’s mind isn’t for us to understand and maybe we don’t want to. Also, the employee said that some irritated and annoyed customers are actually have a right to feel that way, “If someone is being reasonable, i.e.: expressing anger over an error that a company made and not being verbally abusive, then yes, I’ll try to help.” The OP only has an issue when the person starts losing control of their emotions, “The moment someone starts verbally attacking me personally I will dig my heals in until the Karens gets so frustrated they give up. I’ve learned a lot of patience in the customer service industry. Plus it’s more satisfying when you turn the tables on them.”
But it doesn’t happen often that he can calm down a Karen and see things his way, “In my experience 99% of the time these types of people will argue the point until the customer service / sales person gives up and gives them what they want.” Especially young people will consider the arguments pointless and will agree with the Karen just to end the interaction.
One of them was that the buyer must be the holder of the account, so when a woman asked if she could pay with her dad’s card, the employee didn’t allow it
Image credits: u/ithinkitmightbe
But as mentioned, the OP will have a row with the Karen and will be as stubborn as they are. So at last the OP had had enough and warned the customer that if she continued using such language, he would terminate the call.
Not expecting that a service worker could actually terminate the call and assuming that their job is to leave a customer happy, she completely changed her tone when the employee complied with her request to terminate it. The OP gladly wished her a nice day and hung up. Only people who have worked in the service industry can imagine what a good feeling that must have been.
What made it even sweeter to the man was that he theorized “that they were brought up in a household where they were never told no, and that if they tell and be abusive enough, they’ll get what they want.” And this time they didn’t.
The OP revealed to us that their team isn’t big so when the customer came back to place an order, he know about it and actually took the call. This time it was her dad who called, but the phone was on speaker and the employee managed to recognize the woman’s voice.
She didn’t take it well and started cussing at the employee, who warned her it was not acceptable and he would end the call
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Image credits: u/ithinkitmightbe
Coming back to the reasons why people become Karens, it turns out that the OP is not far from the truth. Although experts aren’t entirely sure what makes people become entitled and expect privileges and special treatment when they don’t deserve it, Society for Personality and Social Psychology gives an explanation that most researchers agree on.
They said, “researchers have pointed to factors such as how people are treated by their parents and other authority figures, messages from the media, and other life events, especially those that make people feel that they are special.”
But entitlement isn’t entirely a negative behavior. Psychotherapist and psychoanalyst F. Diane Barth says that “Entitlement, or the sense that we have the right to have something, can be a healthy expectation. It is, for example, a normal part of a child’s psychological development to think that he or she is the center of the world.”
She adds that it is the parents’ job to help their children “begin to recognize that while their own self is important, it is also equally important to recognize and respect the rights of others.”
The woman dared the employee to do it and he was glad to do it, but not before he heard the desperate “no, wait”
Image credits: u/ithinkitmightbe
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
We sure are entitled to certain things like human rights, safety or religious freedom, but the most important thing here to understand is that taking the things we are entitled to should not harm others.
The OP ended by saying that the behaviors a typical Karen showcases is never justified, “All customer service jobs tell you that you don’t know what the customers been through, or what’s happened in their day, however the reverse is also true, people who work in customer service may be having the worst day of their life. Why are we not taught as kids to respect each other, or if we have a problem to think critically and try and find a solution.”
He doesn’t deny that people make mistakes and are wrong and companies don’t do the right thing, “but that doesn’t justify verbally abusing someone over the phone, at that point you’re just trying to make someone feel as unhappy as you are, and it’s not healthy for anyone.”
His advice would be that “We need to be taught how to deal with our anger, and frustration in healthy ways, rather then taking it out on other people.”
In this situation, the Karen became pretty abusive and was asking the employee to commit fraud, so that certainly didn’t work. But do you think that the way the OP handled it taught the customer a lesson? Do you think such adults can change? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
People in the comments savored the sweetness the man must have felt because rarely do service employees have that power over Karens
The job I work at lets us hang up on abusive customers. The company also keeps track of said abusive customers (agents have to fill out a small report... literally take 90 seconds). If there's a pattern of that customer continuously being abusive towards staff their no longer welcome to do business with us. I LOVE IT!!!
If someone abuses you on a call in Scotland, it's a crime. I used to tell them so when working tech support. We also had a rule where we can hang up on a customer if they swore at you.
My favorite for the "do you know who I am" one is to say yes and hang up anyway. Those people are way more shocked that you did it if they think you know how important they're supposed to be.
My go-to reply to "do you know who I am": "Yea...one-third of the Three Stooges".
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The job I work at lets us hang up on abusive customers. The company also keeps track of said abusive customers (agents have to fill out a small report... literally take 90 seconds). If there's a pattern of that customer continuously being abusive towards staff their no longer welcome to do business with us. I LOVE IT!!!
If someone abuses you on a call in Scotland, it's a crime. I used to tell them so when working tech support. We also had a rule where we can hang up on a customer if they swore at you.
My favorite for the "do you know who I am" one is to say yes and hang up anyway. Those people are way more shocked that you did it if they think you know how important they're supposed to be.
My go-to reply to "do you know who I am": "Yea...one-third of the Three Stooges".
Load More Replies...
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