Let me start by saying, the customer is not always right. As a service person, we expect to get some unhappy customers, and we are prepared to deal with it. However, there is a line, and this customer crossed it.
They seem so normal
Upon ringing the doorbell, a woman answers the door. She hurriedly greets me as she tries to juggle showing me to their LG microwave while ensuring her two young children don't kill each other. There is nothing unusual in the home. It looks like someone that has two young children. She does her best to try and have a casual conversation with me in-between wrestling the young ones. I start to work on the microwave that is completely dead and won't turn on. It doesn't take me long to realize it will need a part I do not have in stock. I put the unit back together, fill out the paperwork, and call the woman over to go over the details.
They turn so quick
I explain exactly what is going with the unit and what it needs. She listens intently to the very end. Then the bombshell came. I said, "I do not have that control on the truck and will have to order it and come back in about a week." It's like a demon took over. In a flash, she went from the calm smiling mom to a raging lunatic that resembled something out of some horror movie. The screaming began. As I said in the beginning, we expect some customers to get angry. Yelling at us isn't the end of the world. However, the yelling turned from indiscriminate anger to a very personal attack. I stayed and remained calm as the yelling continued and tried to reassure her that this is the quickest possible thing I can do. It wasn't enough, and she continued to tell me how worthless I was and that I was basically the worst human imaginable. Of course, she used more colorful language. It was at this moment that I had enough. I calmly stated that I would not be returning the part for her microwave, and she would have to contact the manufacturer to request a different servicer. This didn't help the situation. The last thing I remember her screaming was something about how I was going to kill her kids because she wasn't going to have a way to feed them. I simply replied with, "you will have to watch a YouTube video on how to boil a hotdog", and I walked out. Now, I'm sure she was under a ton of stress and just snapped for a moment. If she would have called to apologize, I would have happily went back, but that apology never came. I have to assume the children were fed just fine while she waited another week to have a technician come out and re-diagnose her microwave.