When 'Sticking to the Script' Turns Customer Service Into Comedy Gold
Picture this: You’re calmly minding your business, maybe fixing dinner or folding laundry, when you call customer service to check on your home warranty. As you wrap up, the rep on the other end asks, in a tone so formal it could make the Queen blink: “Is there anything else I can assist you with today regarding your home warranty plan or any of the covered systems or appliances included therein?”
Pause. Did you just dial the Supreme Court? Is this a customer service line, or a reading of the Magna Carta? One Redditor’s story from r/MaliciousCompliance takes us right into this land of legalese, laughter, and the limits of following the rules a little too closely.
The Script: Written by Lawyers, Enforced by Brenda
The story comes courtesy of u/timur_404, who spent a year and a half in the trenches of a home warranty call center. For those unfamiliar, home warranty companies offer a kind of “repair insurance” for appliances—think microwaves, dishwashers, and HVAC systems. As you can imagine, calls ranged from pleasant to positively apocalyptic.
But no matter the mood, one thing united all calls: The Script. Or, more accurately, “Brenda’s Law.” Brenda, the supervisor, was so rigid about the word-for-word script that even a hint of improvisation was enough to trigger a performance review. The opening and closing lines had to be delivered exactly as written—no smoothing, no personal touch, no mercy.
The closing line of the script deserves a place in the Museum of Awkward Customer Service:
“Is there anything else I can assist you with today regarding your home warranty plan or any of the covered systems or appliances included therein?”
As u/dogwoodcat quipped, it sounded “like it was written by a grey stuffed-shirt lawyer,” while u/antilumin joked about “a grey shirt with which a lawyer lies therein.” Even legal professionals joined in, with u/Compulawyer noting (tongue in cheek), “the vast majority of stuffed shirts worn by lawyers are white, TYVM.”
When Malicious Compliance Becomes Unintentional Stand-Up
After being reprimanded twice in one week for deviating from the script, our narrator responded with the purest form of malicious compliance: sticking to the script so religiously that calls felt like a reading of 18th-century legal documents. The results? Hilarious.
Customers would pause, laugh, or even ask if they were speaking to a robot. One especially memorable call ended with the customer laughing for a solid 20 seconds after hearing “included therein,” then asking to speak to a manager just to praise the rep for being the funniest customer service agent he’d ever encountered. Poetic justice: the manager in question was none other than Brenda herself.
As u/BrokenEyeReborn joked, maybe the script should have included, “systems or appliances included therein question mark parenthesis pause for response end parenthesis.” Others, like u/Sonnaille, imagined the line delivered in a Bugs Bunny voice for full effect.
Scripts vs. Sanity: The Call Center Dilemma
This episode struck a chord with the Reddit community, many of whom have lived through similar script-induced absurdities. u/PatrickRsGhost recalled his Pizza Hut days, where “carry-out” caused so much confusion that even the managers abandoned the official script for a version that actually made sense. Only after the district manager tried—and failed—to enforce the official version did sanity return.
Then there’s the classic story from u/oingapogo, whose university fundraising efforts tanked by 33% when a consultant forced everyone to stick to his script. The star fundraiser threatened to quit, alumni called to ask where their favorite (unscripted) student had gone, and the president eventually begged him to return—script-free.
As u/VP-of-Vibes insightfully put it, “Scripts are written for the median call. The median call doesn’t need the script. It’s the calls that deviate where judgment matters, and script-only training teaches people not to use judgment.” In other words: the script isn’t really for the customer—it’s for the supervisor.
And sometimes, scripts are so tone-deaf they backfire spectacularly. u/AuraeShadowstorm shared that, at their dial-up provider call center, agents were told to lavish “words of encouragement” on customers fumbling through tech support. The cheesiest? “WHAT A BRAVE THING YOU DID!” (Imagine telling someone that after uninstalling an app.)
Why Robotic Scripts Just Don’t Work
The consensus is clear: scripts might keep legal teams happy, but they rarely win over customers—or employees. There’s a world of difference between written and spoken English, as u/oylaura illustrated with a tale of a manager who described someone as having “ejaculated” a comment during a meeting (accurate, but not advisable in a modern report). Most of us, thankfully, speak like humans, not 19th-century clerks.
When scripts stifle natural conversation, everybody loses. Customers feel like they’re talking to robots. Agents feel powerless and silly. And the only people amused are those reading the stories afterward.
As for Brenda? After fielding a glowing (if giggly) review from a customer who’d just heard the most formal call ending of his life, she never brought up the script again.
Conclusion: Share Your Script Stories!
Have you ever been on the receiving end of a legally verbose call center script—or had to dish one out yourself? Maybe you’ve witnessed a “Brenda” in action, or survived a consultant’s script disaster. Drop your own customer service tales in the comments. Whether you’re a fan of “included therein” or prefer a more human touch, we want to hear your funniest, cringiest, and most heroic call center moments.
And remember: If your appliance ever rebels, we hope your customer service rep is allowed to speak like a human. Or at least deliver the script with style!
Original Reddit Post: You want me to use the exact script word for word? Absolutely.