I work for a popular cruise line. My department works closely with the Quality Assurance department. Of course, they hear a lot of weird information spewing from the agents' mouths. We hear about it since they get knocked down a few points on their evaluations for being dumb.
Anyway! Some times the agents are dumber than stupid. I don't know if this belongs in here or in
_stupidpeople_ but it had me amused.The agent was on the phone with a passenger (not just a travel agent, which would have still been stupid but it would have been less horrible) when she was looking up his booking.
Agent: Can I have the booking number, please?
Passenger: Yes it's (insert booking number here).
A: Oh! I see you're on a cruise in July from New York to... to.. Ve... Venus!
P: I am?
A: Yes.
P: That's a long cruise....
A: Well, it's clear across the Atlantis (yes, ATLANTIS) ocean.
P: And beyond.
*beat*
P: Venus is a planet, not a city. I'm pretty sure you mean that I'm going to Venice.
A: OH! Well it says VC here. It could be Venus!
P: No. I don't think the ship has that feature. And plus, Venus would be VS and not VC.
A: Oh. Well who knows how to spell those foreign cities anyway.
*beat*
A: Okay. So you're booked to go from New York to VENICE. And then you have the Medieval tour.
P: The what?
A: The medieval sailing. That sounds like fun.
P: It's the Mediterr-.... I need to go. I'll call back later.
The agents go through a pretty intense training here. After hearing about this, I looked up the agent's hire date. It was in 2005. At the time I had worked here a year and a few months less, I have never gone through product training nor have I ever taken a call. But yet, I seem to know that we don't go to VENUS and MEDI, when talking about Greece, Italy and that area, means MEDITERRANEAN.
She failed her QA.