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A remembered Suck from my years working as a customer service rep at a florist.
It was during the middle of a major holiday. Mother's day, Valentine's Day... could have even been Christmas. Damned if I can remember, but anyway...
The lead up to the holidays were always chaotic, but nothing compared to the horrors that were the days after when we had to clean up any wrongdoings the customers thought we committed. This particular order was to a woman that was ill rather than being for a holiday gift. Somehow, the order may have slipped through the cracks and the florist that originally sent it to us never contacted us to say that the sending customer was unhappy with the quality of the arrangement.
I got a call from the sender about a week after delivery. Wait, did I say sender? I mean her LAWYER. For some reason, the sender felt it necessary to jump over several steps in the normal process and decided to sue us. Naturally, I tried to smooth things over first by offering to send the recipient a "kiss" which was what we called a small arrangement with an apology. If we had been contacted within two days at least, we could have picked up the original and replaced it with a fresh arrangement slightly nicer than the one before.
This lawyer dude wanted none of it. He wanted a full refund for his client.
SO... I told him he would have to contact the sending florist who wired us the order to get his refund and we would deal with it florist-to-florist. After I finally got him off the phone by telling him that's all we could do for him, I emailed my supervisor everything that happened. I really didn't believe the sender was suing us, but I wanted to make sure I had everything in writing before
.
He called back - I referred him to my supervisor. After SHE got off the phone with him, she called my extension and asked me to look up the card message.
It was something like this:
"Dear Barbara,
We are so sorry to hear you are not feeling well.
Our prayers are with you for a swift recovery.
Love,
Kerry, Bob, and the kids"
Can you guess where I'm going with this? Kerry was the sender and BOB was the name of the lawyer who was threatening to sue. Nice one lawyer dude, next time you should try to actually file papers. I'm sure Judge Judy would throw you out of court the moment you stepped in the courtroom over something so damn petty.
And on another note? My supervisor called the recipient and she loved the flowers. She thought they were very pretty and had even written down our shop's number to keep for future purchases. The senders had seen the arrangement a week after the delivery. Hence they were starting to wilt. You know, AS FLOWERS DO.
It was during the middle of a major holiday. Mother's day, Valentine's Day... could have even been Christmas. Damned if I can remember, but anyway...
The lead up to the holidays were always chaotic, but nothing compared to the horrors that were the days after when we had to clean up any wrongdoings the customers thought we committed. This particular order was to a woman that was ill rather than being for a holiday gift. Somehow, the order may have slipped through the cracks and the florist that originally sent it to us never contacted us to say that the sending customer was unhappy with the quality of the arrangement.
I got a call from the sender about a week after delivery. Wait, did I say sender? I mean her LAWYER. For some reason, the sender felt it necessary to jump over several steps in the normal process and decided to sue us. Naturally, I tried to smooth things over first by offering to send the recipient a "kiss" which was what we called a small arrangement with an apology. If we had been contacted within two days at least, we could have picked up the original and replaced it with a fresh arrangement slightly nicer than the one before.
This lawyer dude wanted none of it. He wanted a full refund for his client.
SO... I told him he would have to contact the sending florist who wired us the order to get his refund and we would deal with it florist-to-florist. After I finally got him off the phone by telling him that's all we could do for him, I emailed my supervisor everything that happened. I really didn't believe the sender was suing us, but I wanted to make sure I had everything in writing before
.He called back - I referred him to my supervisor. After SHE got off the phone with him, she called my extension and asked me to look up the card message.
It was something like this:
"Dear Barbara,
We are so sorry to hear you are not feeling well.
Our prayers are with you for a swift recovery.
Love,
Kerry, Bob, and the kids"
Can you guess where I'm going with this? Kerry was the sender and BOB was the name of the lawyer who was threatening to sue. Nice one lawyer dude, next time you should try to actually file papers. I'm sure Judge Judy would throw you out of court the moment you stepped in the courtroom over something so damn petty.
And on another note? My supervisor called the recipient and she loved the flowers. She thought they were very pretty and had even written down our shop's number to keep for future purchases. The senders had seen the arrangement a week after the delivery. Hence they were starting to wilt. You know, AS FLOWERS DO.
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