Phlirting


Working tech support as a woman I think is mostly the same as for guys with a few very, very obnoxious, notable differences, one of the biggest being:

I get hit on. Yeah, over the phone. Ya, rly.

“So, where are you located? Oh. Really?”
I wish I made it up, cuz you’ve been kinda creepy this whole call.
“Oh, hey, my ex is from New England. I used to go on up in there all the time.”
Orly.
“Ever come down here?”
TWSS.
“No? You should come down here some time.”
Hah… yah… for crying out loud, I’m a voice on the phone!

I’ve been getting this since I started on the phones.

Yesterday I got a super long pause after my customary call ending question, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” The laughter following the pause wasn’t any more of a comfort. “Well, uh… you COULD but it’s not related to this stuff.” Oh. No. You. Didn’t.

The other day one of the guys got told,

“So you like to hike? You ever hike up here? Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll run into some time.”

For a moment I thought, how sexist of me to assume that the guys didn’t get the creepy flirting stuff.

Then I was told that she had started the call with a thinly veiled threat about how he better help her, and knowing where we were located, and how she could come down here and ask for him if she didn’t get helped.

Yowza. That’s a bit scary. I can’t say that I get yelled at or threatened much. I guess I kind of prefer the awkwardness of phone flirting.

This post’s screen shot is from the Gameboy Advance release of Final Fantasy 6. “I’m tech support, not some 900 number phone operator!”

  • I can’t say I ever got a lot of the flirting stuff when I worked on phones, but being the sexist pig that I am I probably would have enjoyed it. What I mostly got was the angry passive aggressive types, and a few gender-identity confused prank callers. Takes all kinds…

  • Jim

    How special for you. Fortunately, I don’t have this problem. Perhaps if you kept an airhorn at your desk…

  • Shanton

    That is ABSOLUTELY hilarious! I’ve had mild flirting from callers (female), but never blatant comments like those! It is both funny and not funny at the same time.