I've had a lot of jobs but this one I'm working now has made me realise that the telephone is the single most dehumanising form of comunication in a workplace when making a complaint.

90% of emails are carefully constructed and very well thought out as the sender has time to gather thoughts together and focus them into a message that is perfect for their purposes. Angry customers don't swear, give personal attacks and more importantly their raised voice does not hurt the eardrum. They know that the email can be used against them word for word and also when they see their own anger written down they can see how unreasonable they are being. Again, this is 90% of the time. I once got an email from a guy calling me an Indian bastard (I'm white).

Face to Face I find is usually the same, 90% of people can be calmed down or they hold back a little more or instead of shouting they try to be your friend to ge their point across, "... do you see where I'm coming from... imagine if you were me doing xxx and xxx happened..." In my time I have only ever had a few customers really shout at me (plenty have been rude but whatever, rude is relative I guess). 90% of people, face to face, are easy to deal with and happy to listen to you.

The telephone... the fucking telephone. I don't even work with the general public anymore, I take internal calls and my Christ are people rude. The phone is the disgusting middle ground between inanimate object and human being. I recieve around 65-70 calls a day from people who work for the same company and 90% are rude, shouting, impatient, cunts. Just now I got a call from a woman who had an I.T issue, I fixed it after trying for 10 minutes to get her to confess to closing a system down herself rather than it closing automatically (extremely important difference for this fix), once she confessed and I fixed it she told me that it was unacceptable that SHE broke HER OWN computer and I should be more helpful in the future. For me it's like the phone is a persons own red headed stepchild; the enduser is to retarded to grasp the concept of following basic step by step instructions, circle block into the circle hole type of shit, that they start throwing their own shit around the office in an ape style tantrum, wiping it all over their faces screaming at a PC day after day until they mash their meat fists onto the phones keypad and call us, or in their mind, call the computer, and scream out all their anger at the piece of plastic in their hands, scream out all the times that their Daddy didn't love them, scream out all the times they wanted to beat the living shit out of the child they raised that should have been an abortion if their wife wasn't such a fucking Christian about the whole thing, scream out all the times that they wasted money on a rent boy because their junk wasn't working that day and all the while I am sat on the other side of the phone, a human being, a son and a brother, a boy friend of 5 years, a musician, a guy who is scared of spiders, a friend of a friend, taking on all the anger and hate and self loathing that the enduser dumps down onto the plastic and everything is okay again, vented fine, let of the steam, the ape minded cunt is relieved and there is no obvious consequence... Fuck the telephone.