B737-700 flight crew reported encountering an over stressed ground controller during an attempted pu...

Narrative:

Ground controller sounded very busy and very agitated. Directed us to hold on our gate referencing inbound taxiing aircraft. First officer (first officer) called to ask the location of that aircraft and was literally yelled at. We pushed and received taxi instructions the (first officer) wrote down [our instructions to] hold short of D7. There is a lot of ground traffic associated with construction in that area and some signage was not visible where we expected it to be. The taxi instructions we read back didn't make sense looking at the 10-9 page so we stopped at the top of the alley before entering any taxiways. The ground controller began yelling and berating us and gave us different taxi instructions than what we had read back. He was so unprofessional I asked him for his operating initials which he declined to provide and I said 'okay; I show xa:58 on the time what do you have?' he replied 'I don't even know what that means.' we taxied and departed. Upon arrival; I contacted one of our ATC specialists who contacted the tower supervisor who promised to listen to the tape and get back with him.being cautious while taxiing isn't normally cause for an ATC ground controller to become abusive. I would do things the same way under the same circumstances. Abrasive and aggressive grounds crew created confusion in taxi instructions compounded by construction.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737-700 flight crew reported encountering an over stressed Ground Controller during an attempted push back during a very busy time of the night. The flight crew had to ask for clarification on the taxi instructions which seemed to infuriate the Controller.

Narrative: Ground Controller sounded very busy and very agitated. Directed us to hold on our gate referencing inbound taxiing aircraft. First Officer (FO) called to ask the location of that aircraft and was literally yelled at. We pushed and received taxi instructions the (FO) wrote down [our instructions to] hold short of D7. There is a lot of ground traffic associated with construction in that area and some signage was not visible where we expected it to be. The taxi instructions we read back didn't make sense looking at the 10-9 page so we stopped at the top of the alley before entering any taxiways. The Ground Controller began yelling and berating us and gave us different taxi instructions than what we had read back. He was so unprofessional I asked him for his operating initials which he declined to provide and I said 'Okay; I show XA:58 on the time what do you have?' He replied 'I don't even know what that means.' We taxied and departed. Upon arrival; I contacted one of our ATC Specialists who contacted the Tower Supervisor who promised to listen to the tape and get back with him.Being cautious while taxiing isn't normally cause for an ATC Ground Controller to become abusive. I would do things the same way under the same circumstances. Abrasive and aggressive grounds crew created confusion in taxi instructions compounded by construction.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1323275
Time
Date	201601
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	LAX.Airport
State Reference	CA
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Night
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B737-700
Flight Phase	Taxi
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Captain
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 33
Person 2
Function	First Officer
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types

B737-700 flight crew reported encountering an over stressed ground controller during an attempted push back during a very busy time of the night. The flight crew had to ask for clarification on the taxi instructions which seemed to infuriate the controller.