Everyone should, at some point in their life, work in customer service. That’s what they all say, right?
I don’t disagree with this. Customer service does make you inherently kinder to people, more patient, and overall, more adept at dealing with people’s stupidity.
However, I would not recommend doing so in the era of the literacy crises. Because oh my God, do I have nightmare stories from this summer. From theft accusations, getting yelled at and insulted by customers, having my boss give me a couple of ‘you cannot be serious right now’ looks, to getting a few phone calls from upper management, I’ve endured it all.
To be completely fair, I did work in a very high-stakes environment. I worked at a bank, which was also a DMV, and no one wants to have to deal with either of those individually, let alone together. But you would think that people would be prepared to deal with the rules and regulations of an establishment like this. You would think wrong.
Take, for example, the simple act of signing a document. For the majority of my life, I went around thinking that if you handed people a document that said “sign here,” they would know what to do. This summer I learned that sign here is apparently more of a suggestion than an instruction. No matter how many highlighters I went through or how many Xs I drew, customers did not understand and signed anywhere else but where I needed them to. That is, if they did not refuse to sign the documents altogether.
As frustrating as it was, I think I understood that it wasn’t an issue of not being able to follow instructions, it was just entitled thinking. It’s not that customers didn’t understand the paperwork, it’s that they expected someone else to deal with the consequences of their not understanding it. That person being me, of course. I was not having it.
Then there are the people who love to create problems where there aren’t any. To provide context, I worked in a Hispanic environment. Every single one of my coworkers either grew up speaking Spanish, or learned how to speak it because of our job. Being bilingual is a requirement. As a result, I would often forget which language I was speaking in, and customers and I would end up laughing about it together.
It was never a problem until someone made it one. In the middle of a conversation with this lady, I got distracted and started talking to her in Spanish. I’ve never seen anyone be as offended as she was. The funny thing about that is that she’s Mexican and bilingual; I’ve heard her speak Spanish before. There is apparently a very thin line between a customer having a problem and a customer deciding to have one. I was very confused.
However, the most unbelievable thing that happened to me during my job was being accused of theft.
I’ll admit at the beginning of my summer, I could see how this might happen. I’m not the best at math, and I was constantly counting money; safe to say, it was not easy to train me.
I did get better, so it was so surprising when halfway through my day, I picked up a call from a customer that had come in an hour prior. It was equally as surprising when he started yelling at me accusing me of stealing a single dollar from him.
It was ridiculous and, more importantly, something my manager could deal with. So, I told the customer I was getting my manager, I put him on hold, and he hung up. Approximately thirty minutes later, this customer calls again, and when my coworker answers, he not only accuses me again of stealing a dollar from him, but of hanging up on him. In an attempt to calm him down, my coworkers say, “I do that all the time”— which is blasphemy— and that it’s not a big deal, he can come back to the building and we’ll give him his dollar. He never came.
And yet, somehow, my favorite customer had to be this old guy who came in and pretended he didn’t understand a single thing I did or said. He would come in, make eye contact with me, hold it, and whether I signaled him or started yelling “next customer,” he would not budge. Instead, after a couple minutes, he would approach me and then start yelling at me. He was not very nice. He always came in for the same thing, but wouldn’t be prepared any time he came to give me the information I needed from him. Throughout the summer, I tried to keep my professionalism intact, no matter how much it tended to waiver. With him, it was just impossible. However, I grew to like him more when at the end of my summer, he did understand that I did not like him very much, and started avoiding me as if I wasn’t there.
Overall, what I took away from this summer is that the customer is never right, at least not on my shift. I’m glad I worked in customer service. It did make me kinder, and more patient, as much as it tested my limits every billable hour. At the end of the day, after dealing with all those customers, I was always glad that only one of us was getting paid for wasting my time, and it ain’t them.
Featured image: Betty Cavicchia’28
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