The manager fakeout to me is so funny. I used to work a call centre where I was managing generic incoming support calls and if the customer ever bitched about wanting to speak to a supervisor, it'd go in a specific queue to get handled. Sometimes supervisors were too busy so I got roped in to handle some calls on that queue. Ended up speaking to so many people who were escalations made by me, and they would treat me with respect and actually listen, me reiterating the same points I'd made 3 days earlier that we couldn't do this or couldn't do that.