Work can be amusing... sometimes

Here's a few funny (and not so funny) tales from the workplace:

This happened to me personally:
After assisting with setting up a new receiver, the customer asks me if we can ship her another box and label so she can ship us the defective one back. I ask if we didn't ship a label with the new equipment (as is normal procedure) and she says that her goat ate the box and all the papers in it. (That's right, her GOAT!) Now, I've had a little experience with goats, and I know they will eat just about anything, including paper products (however, it is a myth that they will eat tin cans; they will just eat the labels off them). So I send her another box, no big deal, but later I'm thinking, how did the goat get to the box? Usually UPS drops them off on a porch or garage if there isn't anyone there. Some goats are pretty good escape artists, though.

Another one relayed to me by another agent:
A little old lady (think of someone's 80 year old church-going grandma) had spent the last 5 minutes praising God and Jesus that we were always available to answer her questions and we were so helpful, etc, etc. Finally, she finishes her monologue and the agent asks if there is anything else he can help her with. She says "Yes, you can tell me why the hell my bill is so high!" The agent says he just busted out laughing. He did apologize to her, saying that he just never expected her to say that and it was funny. (Apparently, she did not care that he laughed, thank goodness)

Another one relayed to me by a different agent (this is the not so funny):
I'm helping an agent, asking how her calls are going. She says she is never going to ask someone how there day is going again. I ask why. She says because on the last call she asked "so, how is your saturday going?" The customer responded with "I just got back from a funeral. My cousin died. Of cancer. So, that's how my Saturday is going." The agent was speechless for a moment, then stammered out something like "I'm sorry for your loss".

That leads to one of the things I find strange about this job. Some people will tell you their entire life story when all you are do is trying to make small talk to keep from having an uncomfortable silence. I would never tell a stranger anything even vaguely personal about myself. I can only reason that people do it because of the anonymity of speaking with a person in a call center that you will never talk to again. I still find it strange though. Especially when it ventures into the "TMI" area. I once had a woman tell me more than I wanted to know about her recent Cesarean section. Yeah, lady, I REALLY didn't need to know any of that. I really didn't care that you just had a baby, let alone the gory details of it all.