Decent Day: BAD ending

Monday’s are sometimes the worst day of the week, agree? Well, yesterday was not a bad Monday until I got ready to leave work. If you don’t already know, I work at a car dealership. When you buy a car, I am the one that ensures you get registration and plates for your car, I process the DMV paperwork. It’s a job a job and pays decent. Along with that, sometimes our customers get tickets and the dealership is forced by the DMV to pay the ticket in order to complete a transfer of ownership on a vehicle, speaking strictly of a used car. So there was this customer who leased a car and when his lease was up he went ahead and bought the car out right. When I transferred the ownership of his car from the bank to him there was a parking ticket on his record and the DMV would not do the transfer unless the ticket was paid, so we paid it. I then sent the customer a letter stating that we paid the ticket and requested reimbursement from him like I have done many, many times before from other customers with the same situation. Let’s just say that he was adamant that the ticket was not his, even though he owned the car when the ticket was issued and he in not so nice words declined to pay the ticket and was getting quite worked up about it. I was very calm, believe it or not (I have a witness) and I realized that continuing this conversation was not going to be beneficial to either of us. Now, I am leaving a huge amount of dialogue out (see me for more detailed summary and facial expressions) but here is what turned a fairly decent Monday in to a crap day…

Customer: They made a mistake, I was not in _______ during the month of February and I am not going to pay the ticket.

Me: Ok, I will pass it along to my manager and you have a nice evening.

Customer: I don’t think you understand, I am not going to pay that.

Me: I do understand, have a nice evening. (still trying to end the conversation)

Customer: No, you are going to listen to me, you don’t know how to do good business, let me tell you how do to good business, you are going to listen to me or I am going to call ______ your General Manager and tell him what a horrible job you are doing, you scumbag.

Me: Excuse me! Did you just call me a scumbag?

Customer: Yes I did…

Me: (action) Slam phone receiver down and hang up on customer.

All of this over a $20 dollar parking ticket!

Hope your Monday was better than mine. Tomorrow, detail on my Ravelympic knitting event completed.