glitter

Yeah, I have so far found no issue or emotional response to any of the shit flung at me thus far, but today I sort of hit my limit, and this guy was right there to hammer at me until I was flustered. I don't fluster easily.

But my Hello Kitty vibrator is my own, man! :)

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kablooey.livejournal.com

bwah! i forgot you had one of those :)

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*hugs*
That sucks. I'll never understand why people want to do that.

At my job we're allowed to refuse to deal with people if they're like that. In person we can refuse to help them if they can't keep things on a professional level, and we can ask them to leave if they get too inappropriate or get to where we feel threatened. On the phone we can do the same, and hang up if they refuse to speak professionally. I myself have never yet had the balls to do that, but I've never had someone like you had.

Sending you hugs. Oh, and also, what kablooey said. Fuck 'em right in the ear. Except with a handheld drill.

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I'm really tired this morning. Overtired. I keep staying up late, and I need to get up early in order to get to work on time. It's now Friday, and I'm feelin' a little too close to the surface as a result of having lost so much sleep.

I just had to scream at a customer support person, basically calling her a moron. I've left messages and not received a call back on my software orders for six months.

I was truly losing it. I really needed to vented, but I still feel shaky and sad. It's passing, even just five minutes after the fact, but boy howdy, I really needed to let it out..

She said all the right things, and she acknowledged all my anger and frustration (several times), and she got me someone right away. She did her job well.

But dude, I still feel jittery, and a tiny bit emotional.

Uh, was that you?!?! Sorry.

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You know, I am not sure why this is, but I didn't offer judgment on this guy who called. I didn't call him a jerk. The most inflammatory thing I said about him was that he was determined to be mean to me, which he was. I am sure he would admit that himself.

I mean, I get your point, but what makes you think I don't consider that each and every single time someone starts to get upset on the phone with me?

And for the record, I am not customer support. I am the switchboard. I direct people's calls. I cann't directly affect these people's lives, or solve their problems. I was the pawn for this guy, and I had every sympathy for the fact that he's got students breathing down his neck about software packages he needs now now now.

I mean, it's all very nice that I got sympathy from other people in the comments here, and I am not discounting that, but I didn't write about this in order to get sympathy for the poor lowly switchboard operator. I wrote about it because I was marking my lack of sleep and how it corresponds to how I react to a situation that would've normally never been mentioned here.

I am sure it was amusing to you, but it comes off as really sanctimonious when it seems you are assuming that I don't get why a customer might be upset.

Damn.

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I am sorry if this didn't come across as I intended. I was not trying to get you to look at things from his perspective, and I definately was not assuming you don't get why a customer might be upset. I am sure you have thought of all of this and that you did a very good job of handling the call. I was trying to write a humorous contrast to your post. (Which is also why I wrote about calling customer support, people who call up to rant, don't call to speak with the switchboard operator).

As I have said, I am sorry that this didn't come across as intented. I was hoping to provide a little levity and it failed. Please forgive me.

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aldon,

You've always been a kind and thoughtful-type person on MOO, and I acknowledge that and appreciate that on many levels, so I totally get that you didn't intend any offense of any kind towards me. It's all cool, and I've since been to lunch and had some good, real food, which helped.

I guess I just get touchy when I feel as though I've just been told that I don't understand a situation, or that I couldn't possibly be seeing the problem from all angles.

Unless I am seriously pissed off, I'm what you would call a Thinker: I consider things long and hard (sometimes too much so) before I speak my piece. Therefore, to have someone come along and play the foil, even if it's just because it's 'humorous,' it comes off as being a poke in my arm. I'm already bruised from poking myself. :)

It was less a post about customer service issues in general than it was about the fact that I've not been getting enough sleep. Emotions ahoy!

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I just had to scream at a customer support person, basically calling her a moron.

See, that's the thing, though... that's the part that makes this kind of response ring not quite right. It's a good thing to try to understand why the customer might be upset and angry and frustrated (and she *did* do that.)

But nobody ever, ever, ever "has to" scream at a customer support person. Or any other service person. Nobody ever "has to" call them a moron. Nobody's transaction was ever made faster or more smooth or more accurate or more efficient for being abusive and insulting. There's no justification for that at all. And particularly when the service person is one who has nothing to do with the problem in the first place. Then it's just flat out abuse.

Again, I realize this is an attempt to remind people that there's two sides to everything, and in general I agree with that attitude. When someone's upset and frustrated, as a service person, you should care and you should sympathize, you should try to see their point of view. But that's not the problem here, because she *did* do that. When it comes to abuse and insult, there's no excuse, there's no justification, there's nothing that makes it okay. Period.

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I agree with you completely. There is no reason to scream at a support person. It is usually the least effective way to get a problem resolved. However, as noted in my response to

entelein, this was not aimed at reminding people that there's two sides to everything. It was aimed at providing a little levity. Again, as I noted to

entelein, it apparently failed horribly, and I'm sorry.

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Yep, yep, and yep.

Yepyep.

This is transparently true, and so hardly ever followed in practice.

There really is no need for appalling behavior -- not only for the fact that it may upset or offend innocent participants in a transaction, but also because it delays the solution. It took me several seconds just to be able to get in a word edgwise to tell the guy I was going to contact a manager directly. Instead, he chose to take a lifetime of phone seconds to tell me how awful I was, how awful he felt, and how scared he was that I was going to transfer him to "the machine."

Heh.

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And on seeing your further comment, I just have one thing to say:

Dude, cute baby picture! :)

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Well, if my attempt at humor failed to make anyone happy, at least the baby picture seems to help.

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