Customer incredibly unhappy, but still smiles and laughs

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JFC, how did I manage to screw this up so bad..

[bean]

Another awesome customer, even though her service was out

edit: HOW THE HELL DID I MANAGE TO DO THAT?!?! not only did I wipe the original post, I edited in a new thread... into an old post. damnit..... well screw it, here's what was SUPPOSED to be a new threead...

Background: I work for a large phone company/ISP - one that mostly serves people in the middle of nowhere, with an occasional random suburb tossed in. I do tech support.

Another customer that wound up being really awesome, even though I couldn't fix her issue.

Her service had been out for a few days before she called us. Oddly, she called an electrician first - they checked out the wiring, everything was fine. I couldn't find any issues with the modem configuration (even after doing a hard reset on it), and the line quality looked fine - her modem just couldn't get an IP. Could have been the modem (an ancient SpeedStream), could have been our DHCP server. I'm leaning more toward the modem simply because of its age, but..

This customer is also in New York. As a general rule/stereotype, our customers in NY tend to be much more direct and to the point than any of our other customers.

This customer was great to deal with. She followed every instruction perfectly, accepted the explanations I gave her (and when she asked "why?", seemed pleased with most of my explanations, stuff that she wasn't clear on got another "how does <x> affect <y>" from her, got more explanations from me, etc).

The part where I usually get people upset with me is when I setup a trouble ticket - since we're going into a weekend, nearly every ticket I entered today had a commit time that was long after hours on Saturday. Meaning they'd most likely get worked Monday instead. When I told her it may not be until Monday until her service was restored, I winced and waited for the inevitable onslaught. "Okay". Wait... what? Really? You just said "okay" when I told you you'd be out of service for a few more days?

When I apologized for the timeframe, she said, quite cheerily, "it is what it is. You did what you could, I'll just take my laptop to Starbucks until it's fixed."

I've never, ever, ever, ever had someone be so cheery about being told "yup, it'll be a few more days before we even start to look at your issue".

I had another customer who was unhappy with several things, I spent quite some time on the phone with her, eventually having to bring customer service into the call to issue some credits. She ended the call asking for my name and ID, and said her neighbor works for my employer - and told me she would be telling her neighbor how I went out of my way to really help her out. Oddly, the customer service guy I brought on the line is.. the same one that I kinda threw under the bus the other day. Thousands of people on the phones at my employer, what are the chances that I would get the same one again.. when he's at the other end of the country?