Merry Christmas??

[GuinnessGirl]

Hey all,

I work in benefits for a small company. My job is pretty much dealing with retired folks (death claims, tax forms, beneficiary changes, etc.). I absolutely LOVE my job, it is a family business and for the most part, my clients are great. But of course there is always the "bad apples". These are people that should have never retired, ever. Okay, enough about me, I just wanted to give you a basic idea about my job....

Two years ago on December 23rd at 4:00PM (we close at 4:30) a call comes through to me.

GG: Me
SC: Nasty retired teacher

GG: Good afternoon this is GG can I help you?
SC: Is this GG? (very crabby)
GG: Yes it is can I help you (very cheery).
SC: I need a 2006 tax form sent today.
GG: Unfortunately the IRS doesn't post the forms until mid January 2006, but I can send you a form for 2005.
SC: Are you stupid? Next week it will be 2006, now send me the 2006 form now.
GG: No ma'am, I am not stupid. You can go online with the IRS, they only have 2005 forms.
SC: You are a complete idiot, do you NOT understand what I am saying?

At this point I lost it, I was going through a divorce and it would have been the first Christmas without my husband (ex).

GG: I do understand what you are saying. (Okay, this is where I started to cry)What I don't understand is why you are so nasty. It's Christmas. Is your life so miserable that you need to berate someone you don't even know, who is trying to help you?
SC: Well, I...
GG: If you have anything else you need you can contact my supervisor, I do not need some miserable person calling me stupid. I will not take your calls. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas <click>.

My "supervisor" is my sister and she was in my office when this happened. She wanted to actually call the lady back and ream her a new one. I didn't think after me sobbing on the phone with her that it would have been very professional

Well 2 weeks later, SC calls me. She apologized, she was actually almost in tears. She also told me that every time she had called the company I was always extremely sweet and helpful, and she was so very sorry.

Sorry it is so long. She had me shaking. This woman was a teacher, I hope she didn't treat her students this way

[bainsidhe]

Just as you were going through a tough time, there may have been something going on with her also. Kudos to you for calling her on it and kudos to her for eventually realising what a jerk she was being. Few SCs would take an effort to realize their suck, let alone apologize for it later. Hope things are better for you now.

[hawkchick11]

I wonder if that was my 3rd grade teacher that called you?

[marty]

I think it was my sixth grade english teacher. She told everyone but the suckups they were idiots and would never make it in life.

It is good that she apologized though..considering only about one out of ten million SCs ever do. I hope your Christmas was still okay though, it sounds like you were surrounded by a very supporting family, which is always good.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

I'd say my 4th grade teacher, but "apologizing" is not in her vocabulary...
Neither is "humane".
"cruel and unusual" was a rule she lived by, tho.

[Parrothead]

Might have been my High School I.E.P. teacher.

She looked me in the eye, IN FRONT OF MY MOM, and said I deserved to fail.

[chainedbarista]

i'd say my kindergarten teacher, but i think she's dead.

geh, just when i try to have my faith restored, humans reduce it to ground zero again.

i'm sorry you had to draw a bad lot during an equally bad time; at least this one had enough shame to apologize...

[Amethyst Hunter]

Might have been my High School I.E.P. teacher.

She looked me in the eye, IN FRONT OF MY MOM, and said I deserved to fail.

I had a HS sophomore teacher do the *exact same thing* to me and my mom during one of those parent/teacher conferences. This was an English class, and English was *always* one of my better subjects. I was flunking this particular class because 1) this teacher was a flat-out asshole, and 2) I at the time was being a smartass and shoveling his shit right back at him. Not the wisest thing in the world to do, I know, but I've never been particularly astute at social graces.

It was common knowledge in the entire school that only his pet favorites (i.e., the "popular" students) would get the better grades, despite not having stellar English skills. Literally, about the only two ways you could pass his class was either to kiss his stodgy ass till you could taste his breakfast, or do a shitload of extra credit and hope to God that would cover the areas you were failing. It was bad enough that quite a few people, including myself, wound up taking summer school to cover the necessary credits in order to fulfill the graduation requirements. Ironically, the summer school was *pathetically* easy and I got damn near straight As in the two courses I had to take. Had to put up with a *lot* of degenerate assholes there though - but I did enjoy the extra study hall I had during sophomore year when my mom got me yanked out of Asshole Teacher's class for the rest of the year - more time to read!

My younger brother encountered the same problem years later, and my parents almost immediately hauled him out of that class (helloooo summer school!) once they found out that guy was heading it (And for then-sophomore English, this guy was pretty much the ONLY teacher available. You got him, you were sunk). Sadly, the jerkweed (teacher, that is) has/had tenure (I don't know if he's still there; he'd been there for like 30 - 40 years when I was in HS) so they couldn't dump him - despite the fact that so many kids were either failing his class outright or bailing en masse. My brother was VERY fortunate in that he got out when he could, because the very next year the idiot school district passed some resolution making it impossible for students to bail on this guy if they got stuck with him. I truly do feel for all the poor bastards who had to deal with Asshole Teacher after that.

I've heard it said that teachers that pull that kind of crap are secretly jealous that 1) their students are smarter than them, and/or 2) it's petty vengeance for the teacher's own failed life.

[earl colby pottinger]

Teachers

In the case of my bad English teacher it was the fact that I loved (still do) SF, to my teacher SF was not real writting. What a shame for them that was the just the time 2001, Star Wars, Close Encounters ... etc started hitting the big time.

Early math teacher was worse. Would try to mark me as 99% on a perfect paper claiming no-one deserves 100%. I could do nothing, but my parents raise holy hell the second time it happened. I got move to a different class.