There’s a big difference between spitting in your food and corporate policies the customer might find inconvenient.
Oh I’ve seen plenty of times of time customers were angry at powerless employees. And that is definitely what it is. The problem is a lot of people when something bad happens decide that they want a pound of flesh. They don’t care whose flesh, they don’t care if the person is actually offering solutions, they want the pound and that’s the whole goal.
I’m reminded of a time I was at Petsmart. They had those electronic trips in the parking lot that deactivated shopping carts so they couldn’t be stolen. But where they put them was painfully stupid, less than halfway into the lot (a shared lot in a strip mall). So this female customer (I will not call her a lady) had parked on the wrong side of the line, and bought a rather large bad of dog food, and couldn’t get it to her car cause the cart locked up. Justifiably annoying, so she gets back in the store (this is when I get to watch) and finds some employee, little wisp of a girl, and proceeds to berate her for 5 solid minutes about the locking of the cart and all that. I heard the girl say a couple of times “let me page someone” but the customer just kept rolling over her. Now this kid didn’t put the trip line there, she probably didn’t work there when the line was put in place, and she was trying to solve the problem. But nope. Customer wanted her pound of flesh. When she finally STFU the girl said “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do” and walked away. And technically she was accurate, she can’t move the trip line, and by that point she didn’t have any goodwill left to help the customer out.
Who cares if the employee was arrogant. What he was ranting about wasn’t something in their control. And his ranting at them accomplished nothing. And it’s possible said employee had an available solution, but why bother. BOR decided he wanted a pound of flesh. Screw him. Really if you’re dealing with an employee that you decide is being rude ask for somebody else.
I did my time in customer service, and yes there’s a reason why I use the same phrasing people use for going to jail. The work sucks. And it sucks because of these people. One of these jackass customers hit and now you’re mood is in the toilet for the next customer. I’ve put up with being berated for company policy that came from 10 management layers and 2 time zones away. People like that suck.
When things go sideways remember we WANT to live in a polite society. Follow the Golden Rule. Worst case scenario nothing changes but you get to walk out of there knowing you’re the better man. And maybe, just maybe, the employee thinks “huh, this guys is alright, there might actually be something I can do to help.” Or maybe they’ll take that job risking honesty and quietly tell you “look they’re telling us to tell everybody it’s a 10 minute delay, but it ain’t, hit the VIP lounge.”
Thanks for the kind words.
I’ll add another thought about the growing coarsening of society.
One should be polite because you do not know when someone will just snap. You don’t know what he’s hiding under his coat and some men will not sit still to be disrespected this way. We have an expression “going postal” which expresses this danger. You may be just blowing off your frustrations, but the other man will blow you to straight to your eternal reward! Oh sure he’ll go to prison for it, but you’ll not be there for his trial.
Same warning applies to road rage.
FReegards and out.