Rude Custy Insults Front Desk Slave At College

Hey everyone! My name is TiredTA, and I used to be a graduate teachers assistant, but I am now grad student currently working as the font desk receptionist for the advising office at a college. I get all kinds of rude, entitled, and plain out dumb students. It really is a miracle that they remember to breathe.

It also makes me shake my head to realize that they are getting college degrees. Not all of them are bad. But, I had a really rude student today.

It went down like this:

We have two ways of making appointments. A program on our kiosk or the online program students can access from home. We have been having technical difficulties with the latter and I have been having every student use it to catch any problems. There are NO other differences between the two programs.

Me (Typical perky and sweet self): "Hi. Can I help you?"

Her: "Yeah. I need to make an appointment."

Me: “Okay. Click on the Internet Explorer.”

Her: “I want to use the other system! It’s my last appointment!”

Me: “I understand, but could you please use the online one? I am trying to catch any technical issues we may have. It’s part of my job.”

Her: “Is it also part of your job to be rude?”

Me (Dripping with disgust): “Is it part of your job as a student to be rude?”

She shut up and used the online one.

Wish I could have had a better comeback ready. Oh, well.

In another story I ONCE had a student apologize for their behavior. ONCE. That was a good day.

May your customers be kind.

--TiredTA

Comments

[The Last Archimedean]

I'm not sure what you said that could possibly have been construed as being "rude".

Unless you were dealing with someone whose definition of "rude" is "Anyone who says anything that indicates the world doesn't entirely revolve around me."

People like that are in for a... dare I say... *rude* awakening when they hit the real world.

[The Worst]

I wouldn't love being told to use a faulty system either, but she didn't have to be a snot about it. I thought your comeback was fine - after all, it worked!

[TiredTA]

@The Last Archimedean I have no idea. The Ron Burgundy meme of "well that escalated quickly" comes to mind.

@the worst It's the first semester we've had it up. We're not using it for what it was originally intended for and our amazing IT guy has had to wing it. It really is part of my job to help get the bugs worked out. It's better than the old clipboard system though.

[Nocturnesthesia]

I was also pretty disheartened that my institution of higher education still had a pretty healthy proportion of idiots. Such is life.