The most ANNOYING chats

The most ANNOYING thing that can happen for a customer sales representative via chat:

In 2013, a group of children from Nan Hua Primary School (Singapore), probably around 12 years old, started using my customer support chat in an ANNOYING way, totally misunderstanding the professional purpose of this website.

These children were not going to be customers, they were not buying any product or service, not needing any professional consultation, they visited my website just “to chat with someone”, inviting their friends to do the same. Doing this for several days, sending random messages just to keep me talking for no reason, also frequently asking me “can you chat with me?“, “are you chatting with someone else?“, “how many are you chatting with?“, “why are you online on chat but don’t answer me?“. This is VERY ANNOYING.

I told them to STOP but they blamed me that I am a rude, and if I behave in this way, I will be friendless forever… LOL!

I am writing this page so the kids can see it, hoping that by this way they will understand real situation and apologize for the disturbance caused.

A similar case happened in 2015 with a group of school children from United States doing a research about North Korea, again multiple kids contacting me simultaneously for several consecutive days. Over next years similar cases happened at smaller extent.

Dear kids…

I spend most of day at computer TO WORK, I don’t want to waste too much time in chatting. I work either for people (customers) who contact me via chat and PAY me to do their projects, either work as hobby, creating drawings and databases that may be sold for money.

I have set an automatic greeting “Hello from website admin! If you need any help or just wanna chat, just drop here a message!” and I stay online as long I can, to catch potential customers, I also encourage non-customers who may need help to message me so I can ask them too suggestions for my website, or exchange interests. This does NOT mean that I NEED to chit-chat non-stop or enjoy chatting with every person.

I also LOVE KIDS, I have friends from secondary school who once per month visit me and we play with toys, but I HATE to be disturbed via chat, every day, by such kids.

What actually happened

Nickolas started this bullshit, probably he saw that I have a FUN section on website containing few funny chats, he though that the solo purpose of website is to chat with people and publish chats, so he invited all his friends to chat for no reason (in reality, most chats are professional, while the chats published in  FUN & off-topic section are just 1-2% total chats).

If first time I laughed a little, things became VERY ANNOYING when more kids opened chats simultaneously asking random stuff, too many to answer each one. I do not know how many different kids I chatted with, but I assume that at least 10, I had dozens of chats, they frequently quit and come back, changing their names often, making impossible to know who is who.

According one kid, Nickolas put a status message on Google Talk “Teoalida will come online on chat at 5:00 PM” plus a link to my website (when I am offline, the chat displayed this message “Typical online hours: 09:00 – 23:00 GMT (17:00 – 07:00 SG time) with few exceptions“).

I never understood WHY he put that status message (maybe as a way report to friends that I do not respect the promised schedule? – according visitors list, his first visit was at 5:17 PM, that day was an exception, I came late home and went online around 7 PM), but anyway why he need to announce to friends that I will come / I came online?

Some of kids were slightly mature and they asked me “What made you to set up a such site? / why did you made this website?“, I explained them “HOPE that you do not think that this website was made for chatting“, instead was made for professional reasons, to publish my personal works in real estate and architecture fields (read Story of my life for more details), NOT to publish chats and entertain friends. The Funny Chats are the least important part of website… they also said that Nickolas was an IDIOT for inviting friends to chat with me to ANNOY ME.

But other kids failed to understand and kept annoying me. Some kids even told me to publish their funny chats, others prayed to make chats public. I am NOT going to publish any of the chats with kids because publishing them will make them to chat more “to contribute”, and I do not want to entertain them more (I start regretting that I published few funny chats, deleted half of them shortly after this incident).

One kid was talking funny, imitating messages from other funny chats posted on website, but telling me to not feature their own chat in the FUN section – Anyway I wasn’t going to post his chat because is long and boring.

One kid requested to publish more funny chats because he love reading funny chats – I do note really want to post more funny chats exactly because this may give the wrong impression of a “chatting website”.

I explained to one kid (not sure if the same kid from above) that this chat is meant to be customer service, and that the ideal would be to hire a salesperson to stay online during my sleep hours to answer customers, but he replied “you have to pay him, you will LOSE MONEY“. Wrong! In case I hire someone, I will pay him for example 25% of the money earned from sales, 75% returning to me, so we BOTH earn money!