At work today, I was doing my regular outbound solicitation, and a customer actually screamed at me to the point I had to give the phone to my manager and go the bathroom to cry. Over interest rates. I was calling him to try to LOWER his interest rate.
For the first 10 minutes of the conversation, I just explained everything to him, and was very calm, I listened, I empathized with the guy, even though I knew he was just being a jackass. I was still polite to him. I can handle that.
It was when he started attacking me as a person that I got hurt. I had a tough week, just a lot of stressful moments at work. I am literally just trying to get through this week. And hearing someone tell me that I would never be successful, and that I made a stupid career choice being where I am. And telling me that the company probably has trouble booking loans because we are crooks and our interest rates are so high that I probably won't amount to anything in my pathetic, little life.
I wondered if this man even flinched after I had to pass the phone to my manager because I was crying so hard.
I wondered if he realized that hundreds of thousands of people were killed, millions injured or starving, due to TWO massive earthquakes, just last week. People lost their families, children orphaned, husbands and wives separated, people buried under rubble. There are bigger things going on in this world, but he just thought it was a good day to take his anger out on a 22 year old woman trying to pay off her car and student loans. Trying to make sense of this "career choice". I wondered if he knew that I was an actual human being, a person on the other line of the phone. I wondered if he realized that I am a daughter, a girlfriend, a niece, and soon to be an aunt. I am fine with people telling me about the issues of this company, it is my job to handle these things - but don't attack me personally, to the point that I literally can't speak, can't think, can't breathe.
Now, hours later, my eyes still ache, I have a headache from crying so hard. My eyes are baggy and all I want to do is crawl under the covers and go to sleep. When I wake up, though, I've got to do it all over again.