Making A Mountain Out Of A Dumpling

Some weird incident happened at work today. You see, we sponsored some bundles of rice dumplings for a certain viewer's quiz on a certain morning TV show. Received a call early morning, first day of the quiz, from a supposed "winner". He sounded very very upset and agitated, which I tried my darnest to stay patient and cool, despite the fact that (a) it was EARLY morning, and (b) it was MONDAY EARLY morning.

He claimed to be the FIRST one to call in and answer the question correctly. So rightfully, he deserved the prize. However, he received a second call later from the station, asking him to verify his IC number, which he said was asked in a very rude manner. The winner that was subsequently announced later on was NOT him. He got really pissed. And decided to call my GM's office EARLY MONDAY morning to air his "grievances". The call was of course channelled to me, which was how I started talking to him.

He went on and on and on and on and on and on.... you get the drift? For the next 20 minutes, he was complaining about how he had to wake up so early to listen in to the show in order to prepare for the quiz later on, how he was discriminated by the station, how he was unfairly treated, how they have been taking us for a ride, how he knows very well how the station works as he was a technician there before, how he knows it's all a scam, how he knows that the members of the station are up to no good, how they have cheated him of his prize dumplings, how well he knows our organisation, how he always loved our hotel, how he always recommend people to come here, how he knows our chairman BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. His last line after a tirade of grievances was, "So uh, can you please be a kind soul and consider giving me the dumplings?".

O-M-G.

He's either one of those cheapo Singaporeans or he's a schizo who really has something against the station.

I had to tell him I couldn't come in between him and the station, without knowing what actually went on. Even then, it is not in our position to comment on his "plight". Told him I'd check on it, and would consider about giving him the dumplings.

From the station, I found out that this guy has been blacklisted. He has been calling up the station all the time, trying to claim prizes, each time giving different names. And when they call the supposed winner back to verify particulars, the person would not know what's going on. He's been causing a lot of trouble for the station, even MDA was not spared of his complaints.

Gosh. I had half in mind not to give in to him, now that the possibility that he was trying to pull a fast one on me was there. But at the end of the day, given that the dumplings don't cost a lot anyway, given that he actually went through so much effort to ask for the dumplings, given that I would rather not let this blow up into a catastrophe, I gave him the dumplings, emphasising it's OUT OF GOODWILL. Really, it's better getting him off my back than deal with his threats and subsequent bad word-of-mouth that would be unwarranted for. Afterall, the dumplings really don't cost that much to be worth the trouble.

Oh, and here was one of his killer lines: "I haven't eaten dumplings in 10 years, so this would be good chance."

-_-