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dammit customers!
If I'm sitting on the floor, with the guts of a self-checkout system spread around me, along with various tools, you've got a clear indication that no, I can't help you check a price, find an item, or deal with whatever you think needs dealing with. Similarly, if I'm standing near a register, but am drowning in mounds of paperwork, no I am not available to help you. If I am talking to a cashier, sales clerk, manager or even another customer, you will have to wait. I promise you that as soon as I've wrapped up whatever other business is occupying me, you'll have my full attention, but you will have to Wait. For. Your. Turn. Since I'm annoyed today, I've decided to give you guys the benefit of my many, many years in customer service. Some advice:
1) Find the best equipped person to deal with your problem. Not every employee has the skills or knowledge to solve your problem. If they seem confused, don't get frustrated, simply ask if there's someone else you can talk to. You owe it to yourself to get the best possible service, and to get the right answers, the first time out. As a decent human being, you also owe that employee some courtesy, and that means not pressuring him/her to venture into areas for which they are not trained. Don't ask a sales rep to help plan a project for you. Don't ask a stock boy to give you advice on vitamins. Don't expect people to be trained on absolutely every aspect of the business. Even in the smallest businesses, there are still experts. Find the right person.
2) Don't bring your personal problems with you. Of course you can't just turn off, and if you're having the mother of all bad days, you'll likely be a bit snappish, but service workers and sales people are not your servants. They have been contracted to provide you with a service, in exchange for remuneration from their employer. They don't work for you, care about you, or need to take your bullshit. Their job is to balance your happiness and satisfaction against the profit margin of their employer - it is, fundamentally, a business transaction and it is absolutely not personal for them. Don't project malice onto people sustaining the policies of their employer, and don't pressure, coerce or threaten them. There's a word for that kind of behaviour: bullying. Good customer service reps and sales people are trained to listen, sympathize and problem solve, but they can't do that if you're being a harpy. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
3) Don't fight, find a manager and make a clear, concise complaint. If you've received bad service, do not fight with your waiter, cashier, or sales person. You aren't going to win anything, and neither are they. Instead of moving towards getting whatever it is you want, you're making a public spectacle of yourself (and trust me, people will remember your manners fail), and you're creating an impossible situation for that bad service worker's supervisor. Supervisors are there to hear your complaints and to solve the problems front line people can't, but they also have two other jobs that your hissy fit gets in the way of: they are tasked with taking care of their worker bees, and maintaining a positive atmosphere for every other client, customer and worker. Get aggressive enough and no matter how valid your complaint, you'll find yourself tossed out on your ear. That supervisor can't let you abuse his/her employees, and s/he can't let you annoy other customers. Don't be bad for business.
4) If you have an unusual problem, recognize that it might take some time to solve. In most large businesses, the front line of workers are trained to be policy enforcing, smiling robots. They're part of a huge, carefully designed and maintained machine. If everything goes as it should, this means that they will provide you with seamless, impersonal-but-seemingly-personal service. This is great and all, but it means that they aren't necessarily great problem solvers. It actually takes some mental effort to jump tracks from robot mode, to problem solving, so unless the s/he is a particularly flexible personality, expect a few moments of blank-eyed, wheel-turning. Expect too, to be bumped up to a supervisor, if your problem is unusual in any way, and expect to wait. Even if the solution seems simple to you, there are all kinds of reasons it may not be. Don't "Can't you just-" someone, without recognizing that breaking policy means assuming personal risk. Also refer to number one: not every problem can be solved by your initial point of contact. Unusual problems require unusual solutions, and unusual takes more time and effort than usual.
5) Never, ever explain someone's job to them. Unless you actually work for the same company, you are not an expert on the inner workings of the business. Do not school a cashier on retail economics, or their duties as a front line service clerk. Do not mansplain all the ways an operating manager is doing his/her job wrong. I don't care how educated, wealthy, or brilliant you are, or how many articles you've read in the Times, you are not an expert, and in all likelihood, you know exactly shit. It may not require an advanced degree to be an executive assistant, but your MBA does not qualify you to do that job, and has probably not endowed you with the skills it requires. Rather than moving towards a solution for your problem, you're most likely making things worse, confusing and humiliating someone who is attempting to perform a service for you. You are not an expert - keep your opinion to yourself.
6) Do not treat service workers as props. They are not part of the scenery. When you ignore someone who is serving you in favour of your phone, or your companion, you are adding to life's daily dose of humiliations, minor and large. You are being an asshole. When it's done to you, I am sure that you are impotently, silently incensed. Do not abuse the power you have as client/customer in order to make someone feel small.
7) Do not treat service workers as your dating pool. It's true that sometimes executives will marry their secretaries, or customers will date their baristas, but what's even more true is that 99.99% of the time your advances are unwelcome, uncomfortable and in essence, sexual harassment. Despite the fact that it's 2009 and we're all equal now la la la, those people on the lower rungs of the social ladder are expected to accept the advances of those higher as a matter of course. Sexual harassment policies only do so much, especially when one of the main tasks of service workers and support staff is to not make waves. The truth is, sometimes it's just easier to let someone make inappropriate sexual comments, than it is to fight back - because you need the job; because all your bosses are guys and they don't quite get it; because they have more power; because you might be able to get something out of going along. Next time you think the pool boy/cashier/secretary/sales clerk is hot for you, stop right there and seriously question the sincerity of the 'flirtations' of someone who is busy doing their job. Question too your own behaviour. Service workers and support staff are for working, not for dating.
So there you go, seven steps to not being a total jerk. I'm going to cut myself off here, because the dog needs walking (and if I don't stop myself here, I could probably go on forever).
Thank you, drive through.
1) Find the best equipped person to deal with your problem. Not every employee has the skills or knowledge to solve your problem. If they seem confused, don't get frustrated, simply ask if there's someone else you can talk to. You owe it to yourself to get the best possible service, and to get the right answers, the first time out. As a decent human being, you also owe that employee some courtesy, and that means not pressuring him/her to venture into areas for which they are not trained. Don't ask a sales rep to help plan a project for you. Don't ask a stock boy to give you advice on vitamins. Don't expect people to be trained on absolutely every aspect of the business. Even in the smallest businesses, there are still experts. Find the right person.
2) Don't bring your personal problems with you. Of course you can't just turn off, and if you're having the mother of all bad days, you'll likely be a bit snappish, but service workers and sales people are not your servants. They have been contracted to provide you with a service, in exchange for remuneration from their employer. They don't work for you, care about you, or need to take your bullshit. Their job is to balance your happiness and satisfaction against the profit margin of their employer - it is, fundamentally, a business transaction and it is absolutely not personal for them. Don't project malice onto people sustaining the policies of their employer, and don't pressure, coerce or threaten them. There's a word for that kind of behaviour: bullying. Good customer service reps and sales people are trained to listen, sympathize and problem solve, but they can't do that if you're being a harpy. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
3) Don't fight, find a manager and make a clear, concise complaint. If you've received bad service, do not fight with your waiter, cashier, or sales person. You aren't going to win anything, and neither are they. Instead of moving towards getting whatever it is you want, you're making a public spectacle of yourself (and trust me, people will remember your manners fail), and you're creating an impossible situation for that bad service worker's supervisor. Supervisors are there to hear your complaints and to solve the problems front line people can't, but they also have two other jobs that your hissy fit gets in the way of: they are tasked with taking care of their worker bees, and maintaining a positive atmosphere for every other client, customer and worker. Get aggressive enough and no matter how valid your complaint, you'll find yourself tossed out on your ear. That supervisor can't let you abuse his/her employees, and s/he can't let you annoy other customers. Don't be bad for business.
4) If you have an unusual problem, recognize that it might take some time to solve. In most large businesses, the front line of workers are trained to be policy enforcing, smiling robots. They're part of a huge, carefully designed and maintained machine. If everything goes as it should, this means that they will provide you with seamless, impersonal-but-seemingly-personal service. This is great and all, but it means that they aren't necessarily great problem solvers. It actually takes some mental effort to jump tracks from robot mode, to problem solving, so unless the s/he is a particularly flexible personality, expect a few moments of blank-eyed, wheel-turning. Expect too, to be bumped up to a supervisor, if your problem is unusual in any way, and expect to wait. Even if the solution seems simple to you, there are all kinds of reasons it may not be. Don't "Can't you just-" someone, without recognizing that breaking policy means assuming personal risk. Also refer to number one: not every problem can be solved by your initial point of contact. Unusual problems require unusual solutions, and unusual takes more time and effort than usual.
5) Never, ever explain someone's job to them. Unless you actually work for the same company, you are not an expert on the inner workings of the business. Do not school a cashier on retail economics, or their duties as a front line service clerk. Do not mansplain all the ways an operating manager is doing his/her job wrong. I don't care how educated, wealthy, or brilliant you are, or how many articles you've read in the Times, you are not an expert, and in all likelihood, you know exactly shit. It may not require an advanced degree to be an executive assistant, but your MBA does not qualify you to do that job, and has probably not endowed you with the skills it requires. Rather than moving towards a solution for your problem, you're most likely making things worse, confusing and humiliating someone who is attempting to perform a service for you. You are not an expert - keep your opinion to yourself.
6) Do not treat service workers as props. They are not part of the scenery. When you ignore someone who is serving you in favour of your phone, or your companion, you are adding to life's daily dose of humiliations, minor and large. You are being an asshole. When it's done to you, I am sure that you are impotently, silently incensed. Do not abuse the power you have as client/customer in order to make someone feel small.
7) Do not treat service workers as your dating pool. It's true that sometimes executives will marry their secretaries, or customers will date their baristas, but what's even more true is that 99.99% of the time your advances are unwelcome, uncomfortable and in essence, sexual harassment. Despite the fact that it's 2009 and we're all equal now la la la, those people on the lower rungs of the social ladder are expected to accept the advances of those higher as a matter of course. Sexual harassment policies only do so much, especially when one of the main tasks of service workers and support staff is to not make waves. The truth is, sometimes it's just easier to let someone make inappropriate sexual comments, than it is to fight back - because you need the job; because all your bosses are guys and they don't quite get it; because they have more power; because you might be able to get something out of going along. Next time you think the pool boy/cashier/secretary/sales clerk is hot for you, stop right there and seriously question the sincerity of the 'flirtations' of someone who is busy doing their job. Question too your own behaviour. Service workers and support staff are for working, not for dating.
So there you go, seven steps to not being a total jerk. I'm going to cut myself off here, because the dog needs walking (and if I don't stop myself here, I could probably go on forever).
Thank you, drive through.