I heard the tone of their voice and I knew they were hurt

In today's WSJ there is an article titled, "How to Keep Your Cool in Angry Times." The article is based on research (from 2007, very up-to-date) which details the interaction between customers and customer services representatives. You know when you call and they say this call is "being monitored for quality-assurance" and then someone who doesn't speak English jumps on from across the world? Apparently people were listening.

Anyway, so they have a cool graph displaying "What customers wanted and got in response to their complaints." Here's my favourite part: 15% of people that called wanted revenge. Here's my other favourite part: 1% of people got it.

I'm sorry, what? Let's say a hundred people called, ok this means that 15 people--like a whole liberal arts english classroom, or like 15 people who won't be employed in the future--called to "get back" at the company. What exactly did they do? Fuck this company. I was so fucking angry I called them. I said "I hate you and your voice is dumb" and they were like, "Have a nice day" but I heard the tone of their voice and I knew they were hurt.

So then, after this phone call, did they go immediately go to a poll like, "yeah, I did it! I showed them!" And who decides if they actually got revenge or not? Does the customer services person have to say, "Excuse me that really hurt my feelings?" To which they get, "Good. I did it on purpose. I was seeking revenge. You know in Kill Bill when Uma's out to get even? Like that, but this is for my cheetos which were neither crunchy nor orange."