While waiting at the AT&T store for an
excessive amount of time as staff clustered in pre-Halloween merriment, I
became irritable and asked for an ETA on actual assistance. I was relatively
civil. Profanity was not used, intelligence was not questioned and no one cried
but my daughter asked me why I was mad all the time.
Sigh. Because, generally speaking,
consumer related industries appear to have outsourced customer service to the
DMV. In an attempt to present a company with my money, I get to maneuver
through misrepresentations to outright falsehoods, but only after excessive waiting period.
It makes me crabby.
Not only in my personal life,
but after 20 plus years as a social worker, I am
the absolute queen of trying to cut through the bullshit. I’ve boiled my job
down to one sentence. Be a complete pain in the ass until the person
whose job it is to do whatever it is that needs to get done actually does their
for-the-ever-loving, please-grasp-some-competence, a-chimp-is-outperforming-you,
job.
It isn’t just the VA whose strategy is to kill off beneficiaries before they can claim entitled services.
I freely admit that this isn’t always the case. I
was in a discount, department store yeas ago, waiting at the end of a long line
to return something. The solitary kid working the counter (I’m assuming all
other be-smocked employees were clustered somewhere in some pre-something
merriment) was fan-freaking-tastic. He said hello to everyone, joked around and
you know, did customer servicey kind of stuff. When I got there, I told him I
was impressed and he asked if I would talk to his boss. Sure! His boss said
that the clerks never hear that kind of stuff.
Well there you go. So I’ve made
it a point that as much as I gripe, I need to make it known when someone does a
kick-butt job. In another discount
department store last month and there was a fantastic senior at the fabric
counter. She explained to my kid how to
make a toile tutu and embellish an inexpensive mask while telling her to
treasure time spent with her mother. Hello! Big props sent online as soon as I
got home.
So, I just spent three hours, yes THREE, on the phone with AT&T. End result? We can't help you and if you don’t like it there isn’t a manager available at this time.
It’s nice to see things are staying the same.
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