#the bar is halfway down the mariana trench and steadily sinking

[ophelianated]

have i ever talked about how much i looooove working in customer service (contact centre agent, to be exact)

to all the entitled bitches out there who treat us like servants at best and dirt on their shoe at worst on a daily basis, please for the LOVE OF GOD:

take five minutes, just five minutes out of your life to do some research by yourself before bothering us. we're not fucking google, and being treated as such gets real tiring real fast. we should be your last resort

we're not therapists either. i repeat, We. Are. Not. Therapists. we understand that you're frustrated, but our job description doesn't include emotional labour. we're here to help you, not listen to you vent. if you need a minute, hour, day to get yourself together enough to shift your focus back on problem solving, you can just contact again later. don't take your anger and desperation out on us. all telling us how you'll have to tell your children now that they can't see their favourite team play because you can't afford to pay a fee will accomplish is make us upset too because we're not allowed to make exceptions - "gesture of goodwill" is not a concept all companies support. all yelling and cursing at us will do is earn you an abusive customer badge and make us feel like shit. one would think that this would be a no brainer, yet here we are. here we FUCKING ARE

nor are we complaint forms. take your spiel where it belongs so it can arrive in the hands of someone in the correct department specialized to deal with more complex issues, like ones that require an official investigation for instance. believe it or not, we have a complaint form for a reason. describe your problem as concisely as you can and don't waste our time, especially because some of us are micromanaged down to how much time we spend with each customer, and we WILL get in trouble if we go over a certain limit

exercise some patience and understand that Rome wasn't built in a day. some processes take time, and no, in most cases we have no way of expediting them, especially if we're escalating something to another department. adding "urgent" at the end only serves to piss people off

if we say we can't do/don't know something because we physically don't have the method or authority to execute what you want us to/access the information you seek, believe us. unless you're being particularly rude, i promise we're not trying to pass you off, we genuinely have no way of helping you

on that note: if we say that our company policy forbids us from doing shit, believe us. and ask yourself if YOU would risk YOUR job for a random stranger before demanding that we do it anyway and getting mad when we say no

if we say that our supervisors can't do anything about your problem either, BELIEVE US. so many of you mfs think that supervisors are above company policy for some reason. i'm telling you, they have waaaaaaay less authority than you think, and if they actually gave us the go ahead to kiss your asses to high heaven and do whatever you ask, them and us would be fired at the exact same speed

if we tell you where you can find the information you seek and more, don't be a lazy piece of shit and actually check it out. if we spell an entire process out for you so it's clear what you have to do and how, don't ask if we can do it instead. you're adults. exercise some goddamn self-reliance. i've had customers asking me to cherry pick and send them via chat only the relevant contents of the page i literally had just sent them the link to a few seconds prior because they didn't want to click on said link and spend TWO MINUTES skimming the page to find what info they needed and within what article. why don't i chew your fucking food for you as well while i'm at it. tie your shoelaces. wipe your ass maybe. this also gets old real fucking fast

if we're communicating via email or chat, read what we send you. yes, even if it's a wall of text. so many conversations could take half the time if you people just fucking read shit*

don't waste your breath. threatening to sue the company will not intimidate us into doing what you want. we get threats like that every day and (unfortunately) they never go anywhere

understand. process it on a cognitive level. make it a part of you carnally if necessary. but i'm begging you please find a way to get it through that thiccc skull: we don't know every single one of our fellow employees personally. neither do we have access to the complete list of people working for the company. i have no fucking clue who the blond guy who was rude to your mother yesterday three countries away is, nor do i have the power to get him fired (refer back to the point about complaints on how to proceed in this situation)

if YOU are the one who fucked up royally and the situation is beyond saving, THAT'S ON YOU. entirely on YOU. don't blame us for not having a solution to any and all mistakes you bitches make. we clean up your messes more than enough as is, because some of you apparently can't even spell your honest to god child's name right. given of course that you don't just forget about them entirely (both true stories)

read the terms and conditions. i don't care if it's long and dry and tedious. it's also sneaky and elusive and contains a shitton of info companies don't shove in your face, which is why you should study that shit like it's holy scripture before you do anything

no, you can't get a refund for everything. life doesn't work that way. deal or die

understand that we don't make the policies of the company we work for. yes, we're aware that some (or even most) of them suck, but we gotta eat somehow. we're not the company, and we're not the enemy. i repeat, we are not the company, and we are not the enemy

on the same vein: make peace with the fact that most of us are not malicious. we don't sit around rubbing our hands, coming up with different ways to fuck up your day and steal your money. we're trying to make the best of what we're working with. if you don't like the answer we give you, chances are we don't either, but there's nothing we can do and we feel horrible about it. i know it's easy to feel like we don't help you because we don't want to when you're being told no over and over, but resist the temptation to make us the big bad in your head. i promise most of us would love to help you, and it feels incredibly shitty if we can't, especially since helping people out is the whole purpose of our job

our training can't prepare us for each and every scenario we face on the job. it's just not possible. be reasonable and patient if yours happens to be an extremely tricky case that even our most experienced colleagues haven't encountered. we are people, and we are doing our best

*actual conversation i had with a customer (kept vague for security purposes):

me: We can't do x because the other people with you don't have the necessary thing y. We in the contact centre will have to give them y by [insert explanation about the process].

customer: But they don't have y.

me: Yes, that's the problem. They will need it before we can proceed.

customer. Oh. How can I get them y?