Just so you know, I really can’t blog about my customer service job. My company has a corporate blogging policy that prevents us from giving out too much information about how the job works and why, which is why I’m so vague about what I do.
But let’s say, hypothetically, a man came into work with some issues on his billing that needed to be resolved. I might help him the best I can as quickly as possible to came up with a resolution he would be happy with. I would do so without judgement, without giving him a hard time, and without unnecessarily playing gatekeeper in order to resolve his hypothetical billing issues. It would hypothetically be difficult, but that is how my job goes, and I really do aim to do my best even though the clients I might help may be covered head to toe in swastika tattoos, even on their hypothetical ears (my blond hair and blue eyes might be a helpful factor, if this were to take place). Nevertheless, this hypothetical guy with the white power tattoos may be the nicest person that I helped that day, and I may have taken abuse to the point where some hypothetical customers may tell me that:
1) I dress like a whore (I hypothetically wore jeans and a blouse, which is well within the hypothetical company dress code);
2) I am fat;
2a) I am fat and ugly;
2b) I am fat, ugly, and stupid;
3) My greatest goal in life is to get my GED (to be fair, this one was hypothetically a few weeks ago);
4) I am a big ol’ gnarly bitch (with any combination of items 2-2b), an accusation I really don’t aim to dispute.
I also imagine unless they too work a customer service position in some capactiy, these hypothetical folks have never been called a Fat Ugly Bitch at work, or if they have there are policies in place to protect their integrity in the workplace in a way that allows them to rectify the situation without further disrupting the work flow.
Now, these imaginary example customers will range from all walks of life, all ethnicities, races and economic classes, all levels of mental and physical abilities, and their issues might range from everything between needing to pay a bill, billing disputes, the need to correct or change a level of service, to just needing an explanation of services or troubleshooting. I always aim to do the best I can while maintaining a necessary level of patience and understanding and respecting the integrity of the person who I am charged to help, and I do so at a low hourly wage while working a regular fifteen hours of mandatory overtime every week. It’s stressful, but I usually do stress well.
But this job might have finally pushed me to tears today when, at the end of the day, a hypothetical customer may have mocked and berated me for forty-five minutes, demanded resolutions that I could not provide, demanded to speak to a manager that we do not have, or a supervisor that we do not have, or a lead that may have gone home at five, and this customer may have refused to leave the office until one of her unattainable demands were met, at which point someone may have stepped in to ask her to pay her bill or be escorted out of the office. I may have been in the back trying to locate off-site management on the phone, fighting off tears, and wondering whether I could return to my position to finish the day. But this is just a story. Not something that happens Every Fucking Day.
When I was in college, working as a waiter taking shit from customers who complained, connived, and refused to tip, I always said that every person living in the United States should at some point in life be made to work in food service. Today I may have added customer service to that list.
So how was your day (hypothetically)?
Yes.
You know those threads going around lately about deal-breakers if the person does/n’t like Anime or David Sedaris or whatever?
People who treat service workers with anything less than obsequious regard under anything less than extraordinary provocation: dealbreaker not just for love, but for friendship, hiring, respect, reading their books or blogs, or crossing the street to piss on them should they catch fire.
Sorry for the shitheads, L. But we love you here. You know we do.
My day was a okay today (I work in retail) but a few weeks ago a guy headbutted me and then told me that if I were travelling in Brazil I might get my head chopped off, bed raped and dumped at the side of the road and nobody would do anything about it… Charming fellow. I agree, people should work in the service sector at some point in their lives!
Hope that tomorrow is better!
I know it’s not the same thing at all, but I did spend some time, back in the day, doing telemarketing. And the abuse was amazing. I did cry in my car driving home after the first night, and was fortunate enough to find something else to do within a short while, but I remember the anger, the exasperation, and the nastiness.
Hang in there, and let me say again — I love what you’ve done for my blog, it looks and works great. Alas, your devoted fans can’t also be your only clients at customer service.
I work for an elected official! My job is talking to constituents and answering their questions! Which means I get to hear all of their rants about how “illegals” are ruining everything good and holy! And how they heard someone speak Spanish in McDonalds the other day, and we just have to deport them all! And I don’t get to tell the racist shitheads to fuck off!
At least my job comes with a panic button. You know you’ve got a great job when they give you a panic button and promise police response within 120 seconds.
And Lauren, you don’t know me at all, but you’re my favorite blogger. I was sad when you left Feministe, and glad when you popped back up here. You do great things, and mean people suck.
YES.
Having also been a customer service rep, I will give you an amen.
I got a Co-op Job one term in University, where they paid me money but it was also for credit. I’d already been working either part or full time for 9 or so years - I started my first job at 14 - mostly in service or public facing jobs.
I was talking to the co-op admin, and she said, “Oh! You’ve already got quite a resume. This is often a student’s first job.”
After my first week at the placement I thought - holy crap. Some people can go their whole lives and NEVER WORK, if this is their first job experience. It’s just not right.
I saw “work” as “taking crap from the world”. Everything else was just awesomesauce with a paycheque.
abrazos!
Arwen, this is brilliant: “I saw “work” as “taking crap from the world”. Everything else was just awesomesauce with a paycheque.”
Food service, customer service, retail sales, and a nursing or childcare gig that involves dealing with bodily effluents. They are all important for maintaining a humble and polite demeanor with the world.
I worked in retail for a few years. I’ve been threatened with violence, sexually harassed (one man asked how much I “cost”, and if he could write a check for me), yelled at, called stupid, people have refused to touch my hand as I give them back their change for fear that my color might rub off on them (or barring that, wait for someone white to help them).
It sucked. I’d go home at night wondering how I would make it back there the next day. I’d cry because all I was doing was my job, not inviting people to work out their frustrations/prejudices/sexism on me. It’s a tough job that not a lot of people appreciate.
having been on both ends of that hypothetical doodoo stick, i would simply say that people suck in general, except of course for present company.
click here to read about my most recent customer service nightmare.
the thing i take away from this experience is how god-damned nice i was, how cool, calm, reasonable, and even professional i remained, when in effect my personal property had been vandalized by the “service” in question.
i have been in a lot of customer service jobs over the years, and i think that is what enabled me to retain my humanity and my dignity through this interaction.
i’ll never forget some of the horrific incidents involved with being a barista, which is not that far above macdonald’s drive-thru operator as far as how you’re treated by the general public. but through all those jobs over all those years, i took a certain amount of pride in the fact that i gave better than i got as a general rule, simply because that’s how i roll. however, i also made it a rule to never stand for abuse regardless of company policy, and that attitude never cost me a job.
you are loved, as you can clearly see in the above comments, and you are not alone.
I work with kids in an NYC public school. Last week one of my literacy tutorees (the one who hadn’t ever seen me and proceeded to bolt for the stairs) flat out refused to do the (stupid, boring, fluency-only i.e. no-comprehension) literacy program I’m supposed to do with her and instead pouted and yelled at me for “yelling” at her for a half hour (a half hour of my lunchbreak, because god forbid if you assign people to tutor kids, you actually make an effort to coordinate the schedule of tutor and tutoree) until I told her teacher, who berated her needlessly cruelly. Then I cried on my way to my deli, ate my sandwich, and experienced a meeting where a coworker implied he was better at my job because his homework table talks less than mine.
Yesterday two fifth graders at my school–mercifully I wasn’t there for this–got into a fight so bad one of them pulled out a piece of the other’s scalp. One of their classmates saw it and cried. Another classmate had to choke her to get her to calm down and got kicked in the eye in the process.
Today my homework table refused to listen to me when I asked them to do anything, and when I raised my voice because they were literally not acknowledging me they accused me of being mean.
Not to mention getting to watch teachers throw tantrums because seven-year-olds are not perfectly quiet, getting to hear students tell me to fuck off or they don’t care if anyone gets hurt OR if they get in trouble, when they wanna hit people they wanna hit people!, watching first graders need to be pulled apart by security guards, trying not to let my eyes widen in shock when a kid tells me about getting beaten by his parents, and so much more.
And the really sick thing is, I actually love my job. Oy.
Also: I agree with Chris re: being rude to a waiter (or someone in a similar situation) would be absolutely a dealbreaker for me. I would probably tip extra and then never call the guy again, ever.
(((((((Lauren)))))))
I do what is called “internal customer service” and have been monstered by people from whom I can’t escape, as they work with me and our roles all interlock.
I would add working at a homeless shelter to the list of jobs everyone should have to do. They would be surprised both at how wonderful many of the guests are and how odious some of the general public is. We had one woman who, about once a month, donated 15 gallons of weeks-old milk (like, 3 or 4 weeks past the due date), and then take a tax-deduction receipt. It was so disgusting. She usually would plunk them down and drive off before anyone could talk to her, but once I got to her and explained that we could not accept spoiled milk; we did not serve rotten food to our guests. She threw a huge screaming fit, left the 15 gallons in front the shelter on the curb, and called the director of the shelter to complain about me. Luckily, it was on orders of the directer that I had told her to stop bringing that nasty stuff, and so the director congratulated me after getting that phone call. But jesus. Why anyone would think that just because people are homeless, that it makes it ok to give them dangerously spoiled food, i will never understand.
Lauren, I am so sorry you have to put up with such abuse. People need to learn to be decent to each other. I agree completely with Chris Clarke, the way someone treats service workers is one of the first criteria I have for evaluating them as a potential lover, friend, human being.
Which is precisly why all of my anger (cursing mostly, sometimes yelling) is done before my interactions with customer service. While they are representatives of their company, which may deserve my abuse, they are also people, who do not.
Having been a server in the past for a number of years, I know what it feels like. I also know that, by treating the rep like the human being that they are, I am more likely to get better service. Unfortunately, I believe that much of that may be because of the assholes who abuse them. I wish they would stop.
I am deeply sorry you, and every other working class person in a service job, is treated so poorly. As you note, there is a direct correlation between the social capital of a position and the way a person will be routinely treated. It always fascinates me sitting through the annual speech about how we all need to be nicer to the admin while the director orders the admin around, “did you bring the coffee this time?” “those are the wrong size waters.” “I made hand outs about acceptable ways to address you, didn’t you photo copy them?” etc. And I always take note of how my “please and thank yous” to that admin and others raise eyebrows. Lately, I have come to notice how grateful my servers are for a tip . . . No one should be treated like they are ignorant, useless, or a waste of space in their job regardless of what job it is.
However, I am also deeply disturbed by the way you chose to tell this story. In a story that is clearly about class conflict you decide to center a neo-nazi who was nicer to you than a myriad of others who crossed race, gender, and age lines. Noting only briefly, near the end, that you are white, blonde, and blue-eyed. What am I to take away from this story, true or not? Why does the spectre of race, which is so clearly over determined by your appearance vs. the brown woman whose image you appropriate for this post, enter into this discussion? and enter in precisely to draw a distinction in which a person espousing genocidal racial ideologies backed by both historical and present day violence resulting in severe beatings and deaths used as the counterpoint to class conflict? You could have told me this story without making such a comparison. You could have told the whole story in a way that deconstructed your white privilege vis-a-vis the neo-nazi and how that would have shifted for another customer service person who was of color - thus highlighting class and race for you and for poc - but you did not. And so I am left wondering why I should sympathize with someone who tells me a story in which the most sympathetic character is someone who would certainly not have been the kindest person in my day as a customer service rep, he would likely have been the worst.
Again, I am sorry for how you were treated. I have watched it happen and experienced it myself when I worked in food service. But honestly, I have real trouble supporting anyone who when it comes down to their own suffering once again falls into the trap of juxtaposing their oppression with racism offering up a narrative in which racism is somehow lesser.
S&S: My apologies for being unclear. The dude in question (hypothetically) was so ironic to me because of the visible swastikas all over his body.
Word. I was trying to hat-tip that POV by acknowledging that likely the only reason he was decent to me was because of my appearance. It’s not meant to be boastful or whatever, but to highlight how that privilege worked in that situation.
Take solace in the fact that those who are rude and irritable and derisive behave like so because of the discontent they harbor about themselves.
I live the spoiled life of the mind now, and have no customers, but I do occasionally have to explain to Eastern Europeans why you do not, under any circumstance, end a conversation about a girl with the phrase “depends on what you use her for.”
This is the same guy who, when a friend offered to set him up with a girl who was checking him out, bought a dozen condoms before the first date. Of course girl was told about this and decided she had to wash her hair that night. He still doesn’t understand what he did wrong.