The great inventor Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” A brilliant quote that motivational speakers love to use to encourage people to persevere to achieve their goal. But where does the fine line between tenacity and entitledness lie? Unfortunately, the coaches are silent about this…

In fact, if you repeat the word “sugar” a hundred times, your mouth will not become sweeter. Perseverance pays off only if your actions can really bring results. Otherwise, the maximum that you will achieve is the annoyance of others.

As, for example, happened to the heroine of this story, posted on the Reddit Malicious Compliance community, where it gained about 7.8K upvotes and over 200 comments in just less than a week. By the way, in the situation described by the Original Poster, annoying ‘Karen’ also achieved financial losses for her company. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

More info: Reddit

The Original Poster works in a help desk service which works with several large companies

Image source: Marygrove College Library (not the actual photo)

So, the OP works in a help desk service that serves several large companies at once, whose tickets go to his team. Typically, employees communicate with customers via email and phone, and then log in tickets for each of the issues described. Accordingly, for each ticket, the client then receives an invoice for the standard help desk fee.

Image source: Icey96 (not the actual photo)

One of the clients demanded to set up her account ASAP and talked rather rudely

One day, the OP was contacted by a client whom they and their colleagues later named ‘Karen’. She demanded that they urgently create an account for her – but the problem was that the system where she needed this account belonged to another company with which the help desk collaborated.

Image source: Icey96 (not the actual photo)

Thus, the standard procedure looked like this: the OP logs in a ticket, employees of another company see it, open an account for the client, and inform the OP about the fact of opening. This process usually takes about 24 hours, which the OP had honestly warned Karen about. She, however, was not so happy about this, and demanded to expedite the procedure.

Image source: Icey96 (not the actual photo)

The OP tried to explain the standard procedure but the customer wasn’t happy with it

The OP tried to explain that it was not up to them, so it was unlikely that something would be done, but this answer clearly did not satisfy the client. Later, one of the OP’s colleagues said that Karen called them too, demanding that they create her account ASAP. The outrage in the team grew, and when Karen called again, the OP once more spoke about the procedure for setting up an account.

Image source: Icey96 (not the actual photo)

The woman told them that she would call the help desk every hour until her account was opened

To this, Karen sarcastically stated that then she would call the help desk every hour until the account was opened. The OP tried to explain to her that under the current rules, employees would be forced to log in a separate ticket for each call, which then would have to be paid. Karen didn’t even want to listen…

Image source: Icey96 (not the actual photo)

The OP decided to log a separate ticket for each call and then bill her with the standard help desk fee

So the OP did. Karen regularly called every hour throughout the day, the evening and the next morning, eventually gaining a solid amount that would then have to be paid by her company. Then the calls stopped, but the OP is not actually sure what caused this – either the client already had an account, or her management found out how much of company’s money she wasted.

Image source: SeAMK Kirjasto (not the actual photo)

People in the comments found out that the customer wasted around several hundred dollars of her company’s money

The commenters were literally delighted with the witty solution to the problem with the stubborn client, and asked, in particular, about how much money Karen’s pointless persistence cost her company. In the OP’s own words, that’s about a few hundred dollars – as opposed to tens if she’d called the help desk just once.

Image source: Timothy Vollmer (not the actual photo)

Many people in the comments began to tell similar tales from their own experience, and ‘Karen’ from the OP’s story, compared to some other clients, generally looks like a standard of calm and adequacy. And very often, according to commenters, such impatience from clients is connected to the certainty that if you annoy the interlocutor for a long time and strongly, they will eventually give up and do as you want. And this is almost always untrue, and often punishable. Karmic laws in all their glory…

By the way, as for us personally, what we never get tired of is your comments, so just feel free to write your opinion on this very story, or even better, tell your tale based on your own working experience.

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