I work in a call center. I think someone is killing my customers.
submitted 16 hours ago * by cyon921
I'm not really sure where to start, so I guess I'll just give you guys some cursory background info. I'm a 19-year-old kid, graduated high school last year, etc. I'm not in college yet, decided to take some time off until I figured out what I wanted to do before putting myself into massive debt. I've just been working since I graduated, moving between a couple jobs. For the past 7 months, I've been working a call-center job. I take customer service calls for an 2international credit card institution. I won't say which one, for privacy and job security reasons.
Anyway, we have an IM program, Jabber, that we use to communicate with coworkers and superiors in the instances where a customer asks a question that we don't have an answer for (it happens a lot, credit cards are complicated). I know, boring detail, but it's important. In this program, your username is the first letter of your first name, and your last name or a part of it, if it's long. Also a number if someone has had a similar name, like John Smith is jsmith and then Josh Smith will be jsmith2.
I'm rambling, sorry. Honestly, I'm just kind of scared of getting to the point of this story, I'm just generally freaked out.
So, like I said, this all started this morning. I showed up for my shift at 5am, clocked in, logged into the phone system, and started taking calls like normal. Half an hour in, I realized I had forgotten to open Jabber. I double clicked the icon, letting the program log me in automatically, going back to the account I was servicing while I did, sending it into the background.
After that call, another one didn't come in immediately. So, I pulled Jabber back up to the forefront so I could open up our team chatroom. As the chat interface opened for that room, another conversation popped up, instantly, almost as if someone had been waiting for me to become available to send the message. Since I was clicked into our team chat, I couldn't immediately see what the message said, just the username of the sender.
My curiosity was immediately peaked though, because it wasn't a normal username. It was just "cnt0". As I went to click the message, a call came in, damn. Figuring it was probably just some kind of error, I decided to just check on it during the next pause between calls. Well, that didn't come for another hour and a half, it was a busy day. When I finally got a break, I went straight to my IM window. The conversation with "cnt0" had actually gathered three new messages, could still be an error, I thought to myself as I clicked into it. It wasn't.
Now, as you'll find out later, I don't have these messages anymore, so I'm just going to recount the conversation as I can remember it.
cnt0: Hello cyon921.
cnt0: Cyon921, answer me.
cnt0: Hello?
cnt0: Don't ignore me.
I was confused, this was definitely another person, sending me messages.
cyon921: Sorry, was busy with calls. Who's this?
cnt0: Not important, there's not enough time. Get off the phones. Now.
cyon921: What, why? Who are you?"
cnt0: People are in danger, get off the phone, before you get another call!
cyon921: What are you talking about?
cnt0: It's too late, god damn it.
The second that message popped up, a call came in on my line. I was so distracted that I messed up my opening speech, pretty badly. Focusing on the call, I put the messages in the back of my mind, taking care of the customers.
The rest of the day was pretty busy, so I never had a chance to reply to cnt0, and the IM program stayed in the background, no notifications coming up from cnt0. That is, until my last call of the day. I was talking to a kindly old lady when a familiar little box popped up, telling my I'd received a message from cnt0. Like normal, I resolved not to pull it up until I was finished helping the caller. Now, we aren't supposed to hang up a call unless it's obvious that the caller is not on the phone with us, so I generally wait for the customer to hang up after we say our goodbyes.
This leads to a few instances where I look away, think the call is over, and look back to discover that I am still on the call, and they had just put their phone down, without hanging up. This was one of those cases.
Kind of having forgotten about the message from cnt0, I started the process of clocking out when I heard the old lady speak again.
"Hello?"
She sounded far away, but figuring she was talking to me, I replied similarly.
"Who are you?" I heard her say, fear creeping into her voice.
"I'm Cyon921, from [Company]. We just spo-"
She screamed so loud I almost threw my headphones off my head.
"Ma'am? Ma'am are you okay?! What's happening?!" I shouted into my microphone, as her screams cut off abruptly.
"Ma'am? Ma'am are you there? What's wrong?!" I kept saying into my phone, my coworkers now looking at me oddly.
"He told you to hang up, you should've listened." The voice was deep, scratchy, and terrifying. Not the same woman I had been talking to. I pulled up the message from cents.
cnt0: Hang up, now, please! He'll kill her!
The other line hung up as my manager walked behind me.
She asked me what happened, and I tried to explain to her through my panic.
Seeing she wasn't believing me, I turned around to show her the messages from cnt0, but the only conversation I had up was the team chat room. Everything from cnt0 had disappeared.
What the fuck?
My team leader, looking at me like she thought I had lost it, told me just to go home, she'd listen to the call and look into the situation, apparently I just needed to rest.
That was six hours ago, and I just received an email from her, telling me she'd listened to the call.
"I'm not sure what you thought you heard, but the call ends right after you say goodbye to her, she hung up like normal. I'll see you tomorrow."
I'm freaking out, I know what I heard, and I know I received those messages. I think that woman is dead, and it's somehow my fault. I don't know what to do, but I need to get some answers.
I'm going in tomorrow, and I'm going to message cnt0. If I find anything I'll let you guys knows.
