Answering the phone at the pawn shop can be a dangerous thing. Most of the time, people are calling in to ask questions that hardly seem worth our time--"Do you buy insert random item here?"--"What time do you close?"--but they often ask things we cannot tell them over the phone--"How much would you give me for my insert random item here?"--or inform us that they will be late on paying the monthly interest on their loan(s) and ask if we could hold their item(s) just a little bit longer. In short, there are many phone calls which require little thought and could be put into script form and read off by a fifth grader, but, every now and again, you pick up the phone and get thrown for a loop. Some loops are more pleasant than others, and I had two of them today--one pleasant and the other not so pleasant.
Call #1 : The Pleasant Loop
There are some phone calls that make me thankful I was the one who answered the phone and this is one of those. A man called into the pawn shop and the first thing he did was ask to speak to a manager, mentioning one of them specifically by name. This happens a lot, people asking to speak with this or that manager, but in most circumstances they don't actually need to talk to a manager. Thus, I have been trained to first offer my assistance and find out the situation before interrupting whatever the managers are doing for something that could easily be solved without their help.
In this instance, the man did need to speak to a manager and there was a justifiable reason why he had asked for a specific one. Two months previously, this man had separated from his wife, during which time he had somehow obtained her wedding ring and then sold it at our pawn shop. The manager he had asked for had been the one who had rang up the transaction, and he was hoping the manager would remember what the ring looked like because the man now wanted the ring back because he was rekindling the flame and reuniting with his wife. Fortunately, finding out if the ring is in our inventory is fairly simple--if you have the correct level of authorization on the computer--but, unfortunately, the manager was very busy. It seems that most people with legitimate needs call during the biggest rush of the day.
Here's hoping we still have your wife's ring with the heart-shaped diamond, sir.
Call #2 : The Not So Pleasant Loop
After someone has been put on hold for a while, the phone will begin to beep very loudly to remind everyone that the customer is still holding. This annoying beeping ripped through the air at one point today and I went to answer the phone to just tell whoever was holding to hold on just a little bit longer for whoever was helping them. However, when I answered, the woman on the other end gruffly began telling me about her situation.
Upon recognizing the woman's voice, which was instantaneous, I was stricken with that horrible hollow feeling you get in your gut when you know you've fallen into a bad situation. This woman is very strange and so large that she is unable to move about independent of a wheelchair, and everytime she comes into the pawn shop, she and her male companion (friend, relative, significant other?) ask for a print out of all of their pawn loans so they can pour over a convenient, condensed summary of their thirty-something loans. They spend at least twenty minutes going through the loans and marking the ones they want to renew and the ones they want to redeem by coding them with either a check mark or circle. Yes, they have been doing this so long and have so many loans that it has become a necessary and second-nature practice to code their loans.
Well, this woman called in to tell us that she 1) could not remember when a specific loan was due, 2) that she would probably be late on paying it, and 3) that she had better not lose her item. I tried to explain that we could not disperse information about anyone's loan over the phone because we are required by law to only give out information to the loan holder. This requires that we verify their identity with them being physically present with a state issued ID in the pawn shop. I can see how it could be annoying to have to come into the pawn shop every time you are irresponsible and forget when your loan is due, but it is a precaution we take to protect the privacy of our customers. As you could imagine, this woman very passionately expressed her displeasure, telling me that I needed to get into the computer and just tell her when he loan was due because she couldn't come down because she was sick and on bedrest.
At this point, a manager realized that I had answered the phone call with the irate woman and whispered for me to put her on hold again. I nodded that I understood and interrupted the woman to tell her I'd be putting her on hold and then did so. My manager told me to just leave her on hold until she gave up on waiting for someone to get back to her. It made me feel a little guilt to just leave her hanging, but she was not being rational whatsoever and there was no better option. For the next few minutes, I kept glancing at the phone. We have several lines and when someone is on hold on any of them, the line will flash a red light. To my relief, the flashing light indicating the angry woman disappeared very quickly.
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