Apr
4
I was covering for a coworker today at work and answering sales email, and I got a message that contained, in part, the following:
Paying for software sucks when the vendor is THIS MUCH OF AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!
I quickly typed my response:
Dear Sir: That may be, but it’s also true that answering sales email sucks when the customer is THIS MUCH OF A JERK.
PS. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, of course I didn’t. I was ridiculously pleasant and professional, although I did start out my email with the words “Whoah there”.
9.999 times out of 10 in customer service, when someone has worked themselves into an obnoxious state of being and you respond with politeness and a willingness to fix their problem, they instantly deflate. Usually they end up being apologetic and perfectly reasonable.
Why take the low road to begin with, though? Why do so many people vent their frustrations on people who had nothing to do with their bad day/month/life?
I really don’t get it. I’ve worked a number of jobs where I had to deal with the public and I have taken a heap of abuse (although on rare occasion it’s been deserved, like the time at a Kinko’s job when I accidentally laminated a FLY onto someone’s antique map they got in Europe), so maybe I’m extra sympathetic, but I don’t think it takes the experience of having someone yell directly in your face about how they ordered it WITH CHEESE, JESUS FUCK, in order to understand that it’s just not right to treat people with a complete lack of respect. I mean, I think it just takes common sense.
Years ago I worked at a small video store where part of my job was to call the “late list”. The late list was a dot-matrix printout generated by our computers each day that listed all the late rentals and the customer who had them. I hated calling the late list more than anything else at that job–I’m including the time a small child barfed an entire Pizza Hut onto the carpet and I had to clean it with a broom and a box of Kleenex–because people were so incredibly defensive and rude. Admittedly it’s intrusive to get a call at home about your copy of “Weekend at Bernie’s” but people would lose their damn minds. They would deliver an impassioned speech at top volume about how of COURSE it wasn’t late THEY certainly didn’t have it and maybe I should check the fucking SHELVES, etc, and then five minutes later the video would come slithering through the drop box with a guilty thunk and a car would screech off.
Those same people would raise so much hell over a late fee I would literally feel a wash of dread come over me every time someone’s account had a fine associated with it. I’d clear my throat, tell them they had a fee, and take a step back to duck their flying spittle as they generally freaked the fuck out over $1.50. The patriarch types were always the loudest, bellowing about the injustice of it all while their family cowered beside them, and it went without saying that the late movie was always something like “Lusty Latina Lockup”.
Oh, and ONE time? A woman came storming in, accused me of not warning her that “Reservoir Dogs” wasn’t a child-friendly movie (I am not even kidding), and threw the tape (this was back when dinosaurs roamed the land, the earth’s crust was still cooling, and movies came on VHS) directly at my head.
Anyway, I seem to have gone off down Unpleasant Memory Lane. My point is, why be a dick? No one is paid enough to take abuse from strangers.
Well, maybe certain 1-976 operators. But that’s it.
Okay, your task for the comments section: tell me your worst customer experience, a bad-behavior situation that you can laugh at now but was a nightmare at the time. Ready, go!
(ETA: Oh my GOD your stories are killing me. Man, we’ve all been in the shit.)
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(Dog always treats everyone equally. EQUALLY DELICIOUS THAT IS.)
Apr
3
This weekend, when I took a brief time out from breaking the website and frantically emailing my technically adept friends to spray little saliva foamballs all over their inboxes, I got out my battered copy of What To Expect the First Year, a book I read voraciously when I was pregnant but have mostly ignored since in favor of not stressing over “milestones” and “best-bet recipes” and “safety tips” (please, like it makes any sense to cover electrical outlets. How’s he going to learn if he doesn’t ram a metal fork in there at least once?).
Truthfully it has been a handy reference on a few occasions, like when I went flipping through looking for the DIARRHEA: (SEMI) SILENT BUT DEADLY? section. In general, though, the FAQ-style of the book makes me a little paranoid because it brings up so many issues I never would have thought of. I’ll read, “My husband is French, when should we start introducing both languages to our baby?” and I’ll start thinking yeah, when? Should we start NOW? even though as far as JB and I are concerned our collective grasp of a second language is limited to him being able to ask for the bill in Mandarin and me knowing how to say “Your brother fucks cats” in Spanish*–neither of which seem like useful phrases to teach the boy.
* Su hermano chinga gatos. Try it out on your brother-revering, cat-hating enemies!
Anyway, since Riley is now officially seven months old (my GOD, people) I thought I’d see what we had to look forward to in Month Eight, and according to the fine people at What to Expect Riley should be “eager” to start finger foods. (Then again he should be sitting unsupported, which he can’t yet do without performing a slow-motion, hilarious faceplant, but since he can expertly kick his father in the balls from almost any position I figure his overall physical genius is yet to be realized.)
In retrospect I should have placed some food within Riley’s grasp and let him make his own decision on what, if anything, to stuff in his mouth, but instead I slid a moistened Cheerio between his lips and waited for the inevitable expression of joy as he realized there was a nutritive world beyond mushed pears. “What do you think of that?” I asked him chirpily, and he responded by launching into a horrific coughing/gagging fit in an attempt to expel the now-sodden piece of cereal and JB and I both panicked a little and simultaneously lunged at him and thrust our hands in his mouth while Riley continued to hack and flail and after a heart-pounding moment or two I managed to sweep out the Cheerio and send it flying. Dog, who knows an opportunity when she sees one, snapped it out of the air with the accuracy of a hungry falcon.
Is there really a Parenting of the Year award? Because if deliberately placing a choking hazard in the mouth of your child doesn’t make you eligible, I don’t know what does.
In other seven-month news, Riley is greatly interested in both Cat and Dog now. He particularly enjoys watching Dog play Frisbee, upon watching her return the disc to the Frisbee-thrower he waves his arms and forms his mouth into an excited O shape. He laughs hysterically when he’s tickled under his arms, or if you pretend you are a shark with a taste for baby feet. He sometimes babbles when he cries, which is both tragic and funny as hell (“Waaahhhhh, ba blah wah blah baaaaa….”). He goes to sleep on his own, so instead of spending hours per day rocking/walking/stroller-pushing, we just put him in his room–either in his reclined bouncy seat or in his crib– tell him we love him, and shut the door. (The sleeping change has made a dramatic improvement in our quality of life, by the way, and while letting him cry by himself was tough at first I wish we would have done it months ago. He even falls asleep unaided at daycare now.)
His curiosity is a marvel to behold; to share his wonderment at everyday things like the spluttering startle of slapped bathwater, the scratchy texture and sharp green smell of a blade of grass, or the feel of a blanket freshly warm from the dryer, it makes me feel like I have the chance to learn about life all over again with a bright and innocent eye. What a surprising, unbelievable opportunity that is.
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As you may not have noticed until you showed up at work this morning an hour late, it was Daylight Savings this weekend, and since we hadn’t changed the kitchen clock since last spring, now it’s showing the right time again. Being lazy is AWESOME.
While JB has the sort of mind that can perform calculus, project manage thirty-five people, and visualize how a building must be constructed in order to maximize energy efficiency, the man cannot wrap his head around Daylight Savings Time.
“It’s spring forward, fall back,” I said on Saturday. “Remember? Spring forward is good, because it’ll be light out later.”
“So…wait, tomorrow it’ll be…wait. How does that make it light out later? I mean, what does this have to do with the sun?” JB had the same frustrated look he gets twice a year when faced with adjusting his watch.
“Okay. Right now it’s six. Tomorrow at this time, it’ll be seven. Make sense?”
“How can it be seven? It’s SIX.”
I relish the opportunity to laugh at him about this, because the rest of the year he can ruthlessly mock my inability to understand magnets, the TV remote, basic mathematics, and why he considers the MRE an acceptable camping item.
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