I get it. I also know customer service is a pretty low paying job for something that involves being yelled at all day

I get as frustrated as anyone, but it’s not the fault of the person whose job it is to take my call.

I remember once on the phone with Comcast I just explained the situation and jokingly said look, if it helps, feel free to tell ‘em I’m yelling and screaming. The guy laughed. An engineer called me an hour later with a firmware update for my modem.

Sometimes there’s no winning. But sometimes it helps if you can put people on your team

Yep. When I’m frustrated on the phone with a rep, I always make sure to say something like “I understand this isn’t your fault, but I’m very frustrated with X.”

It seems to ease the tension a bit, anyway.

Angry customers aren't at fault. If all customers are mad as hell when they call, then the company will have to start paying better wages to keep customer support staff from quitting, and they'd rather fix the problem before doing that.