I may not be a perfect person but at least I have never yelled at an employee in a store
I have a long story about controlling your consumer frustration.
When I was 19, back in 2004, I was in the navy, stationed at the naval airbase in Rota, Spain. I got leave to go home for the first time since bootcamp. I was going home for the first time in almost two years. I had a flight on Iberian airlines to Heathrow, and from there on Virgin to the US. Well… the Iberian flight landed late. Me and three other people ran to our connecting flight, which was leaving in 32 minutes, but it was never going to happen. If you know anything about Heathrow, you know that a connection break that narrow is impossible. So, I had to get another flight home.
Here’s where it gets rough. Iberian said it wasn’t their responsibility. They had no affiliation with Virgin airlines and wasn’t responsible for my connections. I missed my flight because of them and they didn’t care (or, rather, the company didn’t care and the employee had no means with which to help me). Virgin told me that missing my flight was also not their fault and I would simply have to buy another ticket on a later flight. So there I am, 19 years old, stranded in a foreign airport with $120 to my name, being told I need to buy a day-of ticket across the Atlantic (which cost more than I made in a month).
I cried in the bathroom, guys. I wandered around an airport that was the most sprawling, nonsensical spaghetti mess of old, new, clean, dirty, I had ever seen (there were whole terminals that looked like they had been just been abandoned in 1972. Like someone just said, “fuck it, we’re not going use this whole wing anymore”). At one point, I was looking at my ticket from the first Iberian flight and on the back I saw the various symbols of all the airlines who were together in some business cooperation, like they all dealt with one another. One of them was British Airways. Okay. Iberian said “get stuffed, you live in this airport now”, but maybe one of their business “partners” could help me. I was young and scared and stupid and my American brain said “I’ll try the British. I’ve seen British TV shows. We’re cousins, right? Oh, please, dear God!”
I was told that to talk to the British Airways people I had to “land”, as they call it, getting my passport stamped and go to the main front entrance where all the airlines desks are. My Iberian ticket didn’t give me permission to do this, but luckily the British security guy seemed to be about 146% done with life’s bullshit too that day and just waved me in. I saw the British airlines desk, I saw the guys sitting there doing some kind of paperwork, and I decided I was going to play it cool. I was going to be confident. They WERE going to help me get home because that was what they had to do (they didn’t have to), but I wasn’t going to bomb this guy with my crisis. I wasn’t going to make my terrible problem HIS problem. So I rolled up, smiling, and told him that my Iberian flight landed late and my connection was “a whole 35 minutes, but I guess that’s not enough?” and I let HIM tell me how that was way too short and oh my God you were never going to make that connection, ma’am, no way at all…and I’m sorry there’s no flight to Ronald Reagan, but we have one leaving for Dulles in 3 hours. Will that do?
Will that do? WILL THAT DO?! I wanted to marry that scruffy flush-cheeked dude and his accent. I laughed about the connection, and laughed harder when HE started bitching about Iberian and how they never helped anyone ever, and so on, until I found myself with a business class ticket to the US for no extra money after 9 hours–9 HOURS!!–wandering around an airport trying to figure out how I was going to get out of there without getting into massive trouble with my squadron.
Now, I can’t be 100% sure, but I’m very confident in saying that if I had come up to that guy yelling and freaking out and saying how he HAD to do this and that, and I DEMAND this and that, I probably would have gotten nothing. He would have shut down, rambled off whatever rejections he could to get rid of me as fast as he could, and I would have had no choice but to contact the US embassy and beg a place on a military flight or whatever else…which would have definitely gotten back to my CO and gotten me in massive trouble.
Be calm. Be kind. No one wants to help an asshole.
On the flip side, if you have an absolute ASSHOLE as a customer service employee that will not pass you own to a superior because they know they’ve fucked up, be an asshole, call back, get a new person and be the nicest kindest cheeriest person you can be with them.
Straight up, there’s an allowance I have when dealing with customer service, I will give them all the patience in the world if they’re kind, if they’re confused, if they’re unable to help but genuinely try. But the fucking moment you start talking down to me, being dismissive or rude at all, you are no longer a human being doing your job, you’re an asshat trying to fuck with someone’s day and life in some way.
Everhone has the right to have an off day, everyone has the right to be lackluster about their job and to not even sound happy or friendly, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to be an asshole to anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
Shit, I’m perfectly okay with having to baby step through any issue I’m having if the other person isn’t being an asshole about anything. I’d rather work with a trainee for the rest of my life handling newbies on any type of customer service situation than be forced to deal with an asshole ever again.
i work in a call center and i can tell you that an employee that is doing that is doing it because they have a process they have to go through for a reason.
our supes dont just sit around waiting for customers to want them. we have an escalations team for that. of which, i’m on it. people think a supe has magic powers and they DONT. they can’t do anything different than what i can do.
and i’m not saying you do this, but people seem to think that they can get away with saying an employee was rude, when in reality it was the absolute reverse. most of the time i don’t even need to pull a call to know that.
also you missed the point of the post which was IF THEY DIDNT DO ANYTHING, DONT BE A DICK
no one in here is saying let people be nasty to you. like the poster above you, yelling accomplishes nothing. hell, i’m less inclined to help someone that’s yelling and cussing than someone who comes in calm.
don’t be a dick and if you need to talk to a supe, be mindful of callback processes that exist so that the person that will be calling you back can find a solution and research what your issue is instead of you having to tell the story again for the umpteenth time.
actually if you’re being abusive, that is one way to get a supe. but it’s not going to end well if you keep up the abusive behavior. we’ve banned people from using our services for being consistently abusive to employees.
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