#customer service hell

[pauliestorylover]

Updog, Hot Dog, Ghost Dog

“Welcome to Nasty Burger. What would you like to have—Danny.” Valerie gritted her teeth. “What the fuck are you holding?”

“Um,” Danny said intelligently, “Cash?”

Danny waltzes into Nasty Burger with Cujo in his backpack. Valerie is not pleased by this.

[danalockhart411]

I'm fine.

[thecoolblackwaves]

PSA : if you have a party of 45 people and you show up to a diner unannounced on a Friday night, the staff are going to be HIGHLY ANNOYED. We have 25 tables... they took 22 of them. I have never been more exhausted in my life. Please, if you have that many people, just rent a fucking party room or hotel hall or do it in someone's backyard. Most little restaurants are not equipped or staffed to handle a group that big with no notice (or even with notice)

[merl-out]

Breaking Customer Promises and The Harms of Online Business

I ordered a laptop from BestBuy on sale. The next day, I received an email that the order was cancelled. I pulled up a chat to ask why exactly my order was cancelled.

They don't deliver to hotels.

Okay. Sure.

I asked if I could change the address to my work place and was told to fully re-order everything and I would receive a refund for the post-sale price difference. Okay. Sure.

I received the laptop, and it wouldn't turn on.

I took it to my nearest BestBuy. They swap it out easy as pie. I think to myself, "I should've just gone here from the beginning."

Ah, but no matter. I have a laptop and it works great!

I wait a week. No refund. I call them. They assure me, I'll receive an e-mail with the refund in 48-72 hours. Okay. Sure.

I wait another week, just to give them space to process the influx of end of year orders. No refund. I call them again. "The billing cycle takes a month," they tell me, "the refund will come in around 30 days."

Okay. Sure.

It's been four months, friends, and I finally reach out again. Armed with my case ID number, three BestBuy supplied chat logs of customer service agents promising me my refund, a free day and a whole lot of righteous fury. How could they deny me this? I explain all of this to John, the customer service agent. And what does he say to me?

"Sorry to hear this, it is very disappointing, however I will try to resolve your issue as soon as possible. I would like to inform you that, we do not have an option to honor the price match for the old price for canceled order."

…What? Excuse me? I explain again, "They've all told me differently. I have evidence of your company representatives promising me this refund."

"I’m truly sorry to hear about your experience and I’m sorry you are having to face this issue. Please accept our sincere apology for the inconvenience caused and incorrect information provided by previous agent. As it is canceled order we do not have an option to honor the previous sale price." John tells me, merciless.

But it wasn't just one agent, I argue. I have proof. They all told me the same thing. So, I Karen. I admit it, I tell him, "Let me speak to a supervisor."

"I can surely arrange for a supervisor, but I want to let you know that I've thoroughly investigated all potential solutions in this situation. Believe me, if there were any available options to provide you with refund, I would have already taken care of it. Getting a supervisor wouldn't have been necessary since I've already explored this option on your behalf." John tells me.

And here's the thing, friends, I do believe him. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, even though he's complicit in stealing money from me, but in the words of an anachronistic Anne Boleyn, like what was I supposed to do? What's the worst thing that can happen, John, if I ask to speak to your manager? Explain it to me.

Is it a waste of my time? Four months after the theft occurred, to chase down $430 like some cadaver dog sniffing up and down a river after the frost melted to see if I can pick up on a trail? After four months, will one more conversation, one more long shot, really be the straw that breaks my back?? At worst, what will happen, John? Will I waste more company time? Good. I hope I waste at least $430 of company time. Frankly, I hope I waste more.

A supervisor is reviewing the chat logs now before they get back to me. They're a floor supervisor, but they didn't provide a name. Pray for me, friends.

[itsamepatches]

Workers in retail and food service, quick question: Do you have a song (or songs) that make you wish you were anywhere else *but* at your job?

(Mine are "Unstoppable" from Sia and "I'm Good" from David Guetta & Bebe Rexha)

[underdressedgoth]

My "favorite" game to play at my work's service desk is "Try to phrase your sentence of the situation as best as possible over the radio while trying not to make it sound like you're calling the customer in front of you stupid"

[the-customer-is-an-asshole]

"Can they use the Amazon card at Walmart?"

-Actual question someone asked me today

[undertakers-convention]

Customers think it is their god given right as honest americans to use the bathroom clearly labeled "out of order"

[somedayourocean]

most service jobs literally won’t hire you if you’re not available at least one weekend day ✌️

people who have not worked in the service industry in years (if at all, ever) will be like “you have to work SATURDAYS? 😰” yeah man things you guys go to are open those days. So there i must fucking be

[rollerska8er]

"The actual saying is the customer is always right in matters of taste"

One thing I see trotted out a lot is that the phrase "The customer is always right", often used to justify abuses by patrons interacting with workers in the service industry, is actually a corruption of "The customer is always right in matters of taste", something supposedly said by Harry Selfridge, an American retail magnate who founded the London-based department store Selfridges & Co.

What a shame, then, that there are literally no sources recording him ever saying this, nor any evidence that "The customer is always right" is a contraction of a longer phrase spoken by someone else. What Harry Selfridge is thought to have said (at least, according to Jeff Toister) was "Right or wrong, the customer is always right", which is, if anything, an even more emphatic way of saying "The customer is always right", and a response to an earlier adage: "Assume that the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question he is not."

As I have stated in previous posts, it is important to be sceptical of the things you see and read on Tumblr and the wider Internet, because oftentimes, they're not true.

I'm not sure why this myth persists in common speech. Maybe it's because it's nice to imagine that there was some time in the past where service workers were treated with dignity. Maybe it's nice to use it as a kind of counter-charm, a magic spell which dispels any notion that customers should be given free rein to behave any way they like when dealing with a seventeen year old retail clerk. Both very noble ends.

The fact is, "The customer is always right" has been used more or less the way it is used today for at least a century. I can't speak for Harry Selfridge - at the time "The customer is always right" entered popular parlance, it was quite common for unscrupulous shopkeepers and businessmen to fleece unwary customers; Selfridge wanted to create a relationship of trust between customer and seller.

Over time, however, that much-maligned phrase has come to mean that customers should be allowed to behave however they want and make whatever outlandish demands of minimum-wage staff they please, since if the business does not meet these demands, the business might lose their custom.

While many retail businesses balk at customers being allowed to outright abuse staff (verbally, emotionally and physically), many of them are genuinely concerned about losing the custom of assholes, so they of course instruct their employees to try to be as accommodating as possible. Hence, the saying persists, despite being clearly, factually wrong.

It isn't that there was a time when service work was not exploitative. It has been exploitative since the time of Marx. It's that retail work of the calibre offered by Selfridges & Co. used to be a fairly respectable occupation. Selfridges in particular used to offer a higher rate of pay than most other shops, which often required barbarously long hours with shit pay. The expectation was of distinguished service, to set Selfridges apart from the other shops, a place for the well-to-do to buy luxuries without fear of being swindled.

At this time, most of the people we traditionally think of as "working class" were involved in manual and industrial labour: manufacture, construction, material extraction, trade work, and so on. But as capitalism has advanced, manual labour has dried up for the most part, or at least been exported overseas, where regulators, if they exist, will happily turn a blind eye to things like basic health and safety and PPE in return for a few more zeroes on the national GDP. It's exploitation within exploitation.

So now, the people who used to be doing manual labour, making stuff, are told they have to work. Where do they go? McDonald's and Walmart and the hardware store, Primark and Tim Horton's and yadda yadda yadda. Point is, the dynamic of customer service has changed. No longer is it an exclusive occupation in which the service worker is expected to offer tailored service to every customer.

Instead, it has become a replacement for the factory line. It's a simple, manual job and considered to be close to the "bottom" of the career ladder. But the sentiment that customers should receive tailored service has endured. Why? Exploitation.

The ability to coerce another person into doing your bidding by through abuse, or by threatening to take resources from them, is probably as old as humans. As Marx himself pointed out, the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.

Being able to lord that power over someone, especially someone female, especially someone very young, is one of the simplest forms of exploitation accessible to the average consumer, who, again, due to the advancement of capitalism, may not actually own any capital at all. Instead, retail allows a kind of "rental" exploitation, where you can exploit any poor soul. It's part of the transaction between consumer and distributor.

The insistence that the phrase used to be "The customer is always right in matters of taste" is, it seems, an attempt to skirt around the real issue at play in interactions between customers and service workers. It is not that businesses used to treat retail workers nicely. It is that retail work has, through the advancement of capitalism, become more exploitative and abusive than it ever was at the time Harry Selfridge supposedly said that.

Your issue is not with the maxim that "the customer is always right". It's with capitalism for perpetuating an ever-accelerating race to the bottom in working standards.

[maypoled]

old ppl when fried food is crunchy

[graylikethecolor42]

it’s my last day of work at this godforsaken call center, and it is taking every CRUMB of self control i have not just match the energy and cuss the customers out.

[hismercytomyjustice]

Ha. Haha. Hahaha.

The most difficult internal team the team I’m on has to work with just let us all know they aren’t just about to kick the hornet’s nest, they’re about to rip it to fucking shreds.

Just spraying gasoline all over an ever burning fire…

K i l l. M e.

At what point can I sue for emotional damages? Because if I’m not there already, I definitely will be.

I don’t wanna get yelled at by all our external customers on their behalf. (≖͞_≖̥)

Thank god I’m remote at least. Getting yelled at virtually is much preferable to when I used to get yelled at in person. They can just scream into the void of my voicemail instead of at my face! Yay!

My favorite godawful customer was (not mine but a coworker’s) who fucking hated showing his ID for withdrawals at the bank (of course EVERYONE fucking hated showing their ID). And he just went off with “This bank changes tellers like I change underwear!”

Like, what an absolutely wild thing to yell in public as a grown ass man.

I’m still upset I missed witnessing the time a customer lost their mind to the point our other customers started heckling them, one apparently yelling, “Go to BB&T!” I wouldn’t want to subject BB&T to their nonsense, but appreciated the sentiment nonetheless. Apparently it got so heated the manager, who’s office was the opposite end of our enormous lobby, heard the altercation and came out to see wtf was going on.

My favorite (unfortunately mine) was the lady who lost her fucking mind in the drive thru when I asked for her ID.

“I’ve been coming to this bank for twenty years blah blah blah!” To the point my manager had to step in.

AND THEN. I was working inside the branch proper the next day and the same lady came inside and I had to help her and she was venting to me about the interaction she had with me the day before. And she didn’t even realize it!

Lemme tell ya didn’t need to ID her after that. DEFINITELY recognized her due to her display of her “big feelings” the day before.

Other fun times at the bank! Having to do a training module on what to do if your manager was kidnapped and held for ransom. At the time, I would have been sorely tempted to tell them to keep her and would’ve thanked them for doing me a favor. d( > _・ )

Oh and the time the fucking bank caught on fire. I only ever heard one robbery story from our trainer, but everyone had a fire story. Ours was an electrical fire. I heard about a coat closet fire and a drive thru tube fire too.

They didn’t even tell us our bank caught on fire. I showed up for my shift, saw the building was surrounded by fire trucks, and got sent to the other branch in the same goddamn parking lot to work instead. Yes, there was another branch IN THE SAME PARKING LOT.

“But why are you all struggling to hit your sales goals?” *gestures wildly in the other branch’s direction* (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻

Then there’s the time a lady came through the drive thru and sent some cash through and asked what she should do because she was sure there was blood on it. It was definitely just jam or something lol.

Fun! Not fun? Fact, there is an actual process for that type of thing that’s handled outside of the branch, apparently.

And then there’s the time one of my coworkers stole from her own drawer and tried to pass it off like she fucked up a transaction. She was apparently not a very good actress and they were onto her immediately. Management kept saying “oh, because it’s this amount there’s going to be further consequences” and she kept magically finding more obviously folded up bills to get her to a lower threshold so she’d be in “less trouble”. And then she threatened to sue the bank when they told her she was going to be investigated for theft. ꉂ (´∀｀)ʱªʱªʱª

I’m sorry, but if you’re gonna do something so painfully stupid like steal from your own drawer, maybe do a better fucking job???

We had a lot of very sweet regulars, though. Mostly older folks you could tell were a little lonely. Part of me misses getting to help try to brighten their day. But most of me would rather drink bleach than have to physically deal with the general public in a customer service role again.

Yeah, I’m still kind of in customer service, almost more like technical/operational support, helping people navigate our batshit and wildly confusing ancient and absurdly manual systems and processes. But it’s B2B and most people, when representing their employer, manage to keep their crazy dialed down to like, a 6/7 out of 10 instead of a 20 out of 10.

We really should get to hunt one godawful customer for sport once a year to keep them in all in line… Or bare minimum charge them an additional fee for harassing the staff that the employee in question gets to keep.

[spacebeige]

Now hiring for a customer service rep. Again. People keep quitting on us and we can’t figure out why.

[prismaticpanic]

Work has gone FUBAR for the 2nd night in a row and I cant cry AT work so I must scream here

That is all

Also if one more customer screams at me over the phone bc we can't make pizzas I'm going to commit verbal homicide

[alexisashnew]

GOD I HATE MEN WAITING FOR ME FOR HOURS AND THEN FOLLOWING ME HOME