A customer service rep told callers that talking over her is ‘so disrespectful,’ but a viewer says 50 minutes on hold is why everyone’s in a rush

A customer service rep who posts on TikTok as @thepaigelangley urged callers to rethink how they speak to agents on the phone. “Some of you genuinely need to reevaluate how you talk to people on the phone,” she said in a TikTok video, as reported by The Daily Dot. One of her biggest frustrations was callers who talk over representatives.

“When you start talking over me with more questions, it’s so disrespectful, stop doing that to people,” she said. She also called out callers who complain about a bad connection while calling from their cars.

Another pet peeve was when a rep asks if there is anything else they can help with, and the caller simply says “Bye” and hangs up. She said she viewed this as disrespectful and would just end the call if someone did that. She also called out people who rush or belittle representatives and said she would not put up with it. She added that it is normal for reps, especially in the health care industry, to ask for personal information, since they need to verify callers’ details.

Not every viewer put the blame on callers

Several viewers agreed with her in the comments. One wrote that “9 times out of 10, I was going to answer the next question you had if you’d have LET ME FINISH.”

Another viewer pushed back, writing, “people usually don’t have 30/40/50 minutes to wait on hold to speak to someone.” They suggested that while someone might have had time when they first called, a long wait can push them into a rush. A Los Angeles comedian recently said a 911 dispatcher hung up on her after she cut in with a question during a call about a crash.

Hostile calls are common, according to research from customer service expert Shep Hyken, which found 34% of customers admit to yelling at agents and 21% admit to cursing at them, while 60% said they have hung up on an agent. The same research found 79% of customers had repeatedly shouted “Agent” or “Representative” into an automated phone menu before hanging up out of frustration. Hyken also listed long hold times among the reasons customers dislike calling support.

A Perceptyx survey of more than 21,000 workers found 53% of public-facing workers had recently dealt with customers who were verbally abusive, threatening, or otherwise unruly. Nearly two-thirds of frontline employees said they had to call on a manager for help with an unruly customer, and workers who dealt with such customers were 1.3 times more likely to be actively job searching.