Management forbids tech support employees from providing customers solutions to their problems, claiming it makes them look bad: ‘We had customers call back for months’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Apr 25, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

Some people believe that when they finally move on from this world, they will get to see all kinds of data and information about the life they lived. For example, how many kisses they had, how many years they spent sleeping, etc. They want confirmation that they had a life well-lived, that they seized the day and made the best out of every situation.

However, we all know we actually spend a significant amount of time on stuff that turns out to be a complete waste. It is simply a part of life. So some of us would actually like to get data on how much time we spend on things that ended up becoming completely pointless. How many times have we fallen for the wrong person, or how many hours did we spent waiting for someone to pick up the phone?

We especially want to know how much time we wasted on the phone with customer support until we realized they are no help at all, something we imagine the customers in the story below would also want to know.

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  • Even though the employee in the story below knew exactly how to solve the problems of the people who called their tech support, management actually forbade them from helping.

    Luckily, the faithful employee refused to listen to those restrictions…

  • Cheezburger Image 10496886272
    via SeventyFour

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • "Can you hear me now? DSL tech support"

    (This might not belong here, but it's the best place I can think of to put this.) When I worked in a DSL tech support role, there
    via Rionddo
  • was one customer classification I kept coming across: ones who had their DSL account in a "pending" state.
    via Rionddo
  • What that meant was that the phone line and the DSL was sold at the same time. The other thing it meant was that the DSL would not be
    via Rionddo
  • turned on until the old sale was canceled and re-entered into the system. Whenever I found someone who had their
    via Rionddo
  • account in a pending status, I would tell them this and transfer them to Sales so they could get it set up.
    via Rionddo
  • After a while, though, Management got upset at this, because it made them look bad. We were told not to tell the customer that it would
    via Rionddo
  • never be fulfilled unless they talk to Sales. Instead, we were supposed to say that the account was in pending status and, if the DSL
    via Rionddo
  • wasn't turned on in a couple of weeks, to call back. We had customers call back for months because
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  • of this, getting more and more pi ed since their DSL wasn't on. I finally got to the point where I would say, "Your
    via Rionddo
  • account is in a pending status. Let me transfer you to Sales to see if they know why." So even though I didn't tell them that their DSL
    via Rionddo
  • would never come on (like we were told to do), I hopefully got them the help they needed. (That was the only job I ever abandoned. It was
    via Rionddo
  • so stressful that at least once a week we had an ambulance come get someone.
    via Rionddo
  • Cheezburger Image 10496886528
    via golubovy

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • michaelgum97 Let me get this straight: Management only cared about looking good rather than addressing the underline issue and
    via michaelgum97
  • essentially wanted angry customers? And what the h is this about calling an ambulance once per week? What kind of psychopaths were running this s'. show?
    via michaelgum97
  • AppropriateRip9996 I was on a call team. Best tech was a woman who would help zero people because she would pretend not to know anything about computers. Her numbers were best.
    via AppropriateRip9996
  • The rest of us would try some diagnostics to at least close some tickets and we would but all they cared about was how long our average call was.
    via AppropriateRip9996
  • kula_foo Another out of this world management decision that doesn't make sense! Smh!
    via kula_foo
  • mrcub1 I worked tech support at ATTWorldnett very briefly, the call system to talk to a rep was intentionally complicated so people would just hang up. I quit soon after learning that fact.
    via mrcub1
  • KlutzyEnd3 We were told not to tell the customer that it would never be fulfilled unless they talk to Sales I would simply ask "what is my job then? aren't we here to help the customer? so you're telling me to not do my job?"
    via KlutzyEnd3

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customer service boss workplace-stories tech support employee manager job malicious compliance tales-from-the-workplace work customers reddit story ceo overworked-employees workplace Tech Reddit company
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