Tale of the speeding heart

Once upon a time, there was Building in a historical town in Pennsylvania. This building housed a Fortune 500 Telephone Company and ISP. On the second floor, sat Cabal in-front of a computer screen and a head set. Waiting for unhappy customers to call in and report that their internet isn't working. When cabal go this call, he told customers how to troubleshoot their connections, and always said goodbye to now reassured customers when the issue was fixed.

One day on May 5th 2012. Cabal got a call. This call was unusual. It did not display a number, it didn't even display a location, it just showed xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.

The caller was a man, he was in Europe, and wanted to report that his internet in the united states where his wife was at is not working and wanted me to "roll a truck". (Dispatch).

I politely asked him which lights were on his modem. The man did not know. I then told him it would be hard to for me to determine what to dispatch for, and asked him to have his wife call us.

The man did get upset, and the angry games began.

The angry games is where a customer becomes argumentative, tells me how stupid I or the company is... blah blah blah... basically go on a rant.

Instead of that, he just kept pushing for this dispatch, calling his wife "Dumb as a brick" not able to do anything, etc. He then told me about this "Outage his area was in" (there was none).

I can't recall all the details. But this was a unusually pushy, rude, rich-snob of a man who has no respect for women (and why the hell was his wife not with him???).

Then it happened. My heart began to beat abnormally.

While the customer was going on, I doubled over and my head hit the keyboard, I was sweating profusely and breathing hard, purple stars appeared in the center of my vision. My hands and feet began to tingle, I wanted to throw up and use the bathroom really bad, I reached with my finger to the artery in my neck.

My heart was beating out of sync, and at 4 beat a second!

It was at that moment my supervisor walked by and whispered "are you okay?"

I muted my head set and screamed "AMBULANCE! I... Need hospital...help!"

And then she ran back to her cubical and called 911. My co-workers poked their heads over the cubicals, watching me reply to the unreasonable customer demands faintly, I then made an excuse that I was going to ask a supervisor about his question. Then pushed the hold button, then the button for a engineer.

The engineers are "technically" supervisors, as they help us out when there is a software problem on our end that needs fixed for customers so that their internet can work (Basically, they are in charge of the on/off switch). I got a lucky break and a engineer in my building answered my call.

"Engineering, may I have your ID?"

"XXX"

"Thank you and the number you are working on?"

"help!"

"huh?"

"medical emergency, customer on phone is mean....and made my heart is beating... fast..."

(sensing danger) "Where are you?!?!"

"xxxxxx, pa"

"hold on buddy, I am going to transfer your customer to the abuse desk for you and be right with you!!"

"...help..."

The engineer in question was a volunteer firefighter and ran over to my desk, disabled my phone and demanded my attention so that he could slow my heartrate. All physical measures failed, and the purple stars got worse and I was terrified out of my mind.

I am going to die!

The paramedics finally cam about, and was greeted by a cheerful medic, who proceeded to take my blood pressure and hook me to a heart monitor.

220 beats per minute!

He then jabbed my arm with a needle.

The purple stars went away, my heart went back to a regular rythem, and the monitor showed 110.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"...Yes..."

"Great, off to the hospital!"

2 hours later. I was released, the diagnoses was Super-ventricular tachycardia.

Moral of this story, be nice to your repair man, and lay off the coffee during stressful periods of work.