Blackout

Every call center experiences moments of extreme technical meltdown, where the system that everyone relies upon refuses to function for an hour, or two, or maybe three, and the employees are still supposed to man the phones like nothing is wrong. Sometimes, like in GE, you get a system called FDR that allows you to manipulate customer accounts in a green screen. But at other times, you're just screwed. In some ways, this makes your job easy because you can just keep telling them sorry and to call back in a few hours. But then if they call back in a few hours and the system still is trashed, it escalates. However, it's not like you can do anything about it anyway. Notably, the phones are always the last to go. The power could go out, your computers could explode, but you'd still be talking to irate customers wondering where their order is. Invariably, many customers will pick this time to argue with you about billing, return policy, and other issues that you can only see when your system is up and running.