Over seven years ago, I began my current career in cutomer service management (which followed my previous four-year career in customer service management). Things have gotten steadily worse over the years, especially now that I work in an atmosphere which caters to Financial District corporate slime.
I don’t understand these people. I don’t speak their language. I do not share their priorities. It has always been my belief that you get better results by being nice to people than by throwing attitude from your first encounter. I am completely unwilling to go out of my way for customers who are condescending and rude from the minute they walk in the door. Unfortunately, coprorate culture — especially in large cities — seems to have brainwashed its clones into beleiveing that rudeness is perveived as an efficient, assertive, and businesslike attitude. Rudeness gets results! Yeah, right…
Some recent highlights in my career: I’ve been called stupid by a for not having the psychic powers to decipher an order messengered to me with no instructions, told I was full of shit for following federal law, called sexist for waiting on a man who was in line in front of a woman, called racist for asking a gentleman who was not a customer but had been using the phone for an hour to let actual paying customers use it, and told to “fuck off” for not dropping all pending business to do the impossible immediately for a stockbroker swine.
Today, a woman threatened to sue me. This has happened before, when a job was not comlpleted on time for example. Lawyer-swine love to threaten “lowly” service employees with litigation, assuming we’re too damn stupid to know that (a) they have no case, and (b) our corporate lawyers can most likely kick their asses. This woman, however, threatened to sue me because I told her I’d call the police if she didn’t get out of my store and stop poking me in the face. Yuppies hate it when you remind them they’re breaking the law by physically assaulting you.
