CALL OF THE WEEK

Scribe: How May I help you today?
Customer: Okay! I need yours and (your company’s) help!
Scribe: What can I do for you today?
Customer: My wife is on psychiatric medication.
Scribe: …Uh-huh…
Customer: Sometimes she gets disoriented and forgets where she is.
Scribe: …Okay…
Customer: Well, she went to West Virginia for a religious getaway and she took our nine-month-old son with her. She was supposed to be home last night.
Scribe: She didn’t make it?
Customer: No. She was supposed to take the train back to Indiana and she never arrived. I’ve been trying to call her for the past day and a half!
Scribe: (This is not an episode of 24. What does this poor guy think I can do?) She isn’t answering the phone either?
Customer: No it just rings and goes to voicemail! I spoke to the police and they said to contact you guys and see if you can get the most recent calls placed from her phone.
Scribe: (Cops are so ignorant of this industry) Well, actually we…
Customer: I have Sergeant (name omitted) working on this in Indiana but I also contacted the West Virginia police. A woman in Cleveland, Ohio reported a disoriented woman getting off the train with a child. Our son is only nine months old! Now I have the Cleveland police working on this, too!
Scribe: Ah…
Customer: So, I’ve gotta find a way to see if she might have overdosed on her meds and got all confused and disoriented.
Scribe: Okay. Well, what we normally…
Customer: And, sir! To be honest with you, my main concern right now has to be the child. He’s nine months old!
Scribe: Right. Well, I’m definitely sorry you’re going through all this right now. We actually don’t have access to recent call detail. We’re only able to view whatever has been processed onto your bills. Now, you can view recent calls on our website but they are usually going to be 24-48 hours behind.
Customer: Yeah, and this was last night.
Scribe: Exactly. So in these cases we ask you to have the police officer working the case contact our customer service department. At that point he can request our legal department and they can actually research the account for unbilled calling detail.
Customer: Okay, so just have the sergeant call? I can do that! I’m driving to the police station right now.
Scribe: Great. He should be able to get whatever information is available. All I can see right now is that there is reported usage on the handset as far as minutes used.
Customer: Okay, I’ll have him call! Listen, thanks for all your help!
Scribe: You’re welcome. Thanks for calling and good luck to you!

I felt like I was in a movie of the week! That poor Bastard was frantic and scared to death, yet somehow he was holding it together. Rarely do I wonder what happens to a customer after the call ends, but I have found myself returning to this one quite often. Did they find his wife and child? Was she really disoriented? Did she join some religious cult and sacrifice her baby to the divine leader? I will probably never know unless it makes the national news. I do know he called back and put the cop on the line. I didn’t think to save the account for future reference so that’s all I know. Such a strange world we live in these days, where this type of human connection can occur for just a brief moment in time and nothing ever comes of it~