Late Night Philosophy

Screw Customer Service

It might not be easy to come to like people when you don't care about them, but it is easy to get along with them. People, on the whole, are generally stupid and inconsiderate. This isn't a new idea to those people in the service industry. Customers forget things, assume things, and give incorrect information. People aren't perfect and neither are you.

Some employees are very considerate of their customers and are genuinely happy to help and know every procedure and policy and are, on the whole, very helpful. They are the people who get promotions and the stressful jobs that they are, somehow, good at. Some are completely unhappy with the work and are genuinely unhelpful and don't care about the customer. I'm somewhere in the middle. I can double-think happiness and mentally block the pain. This isn't a problem. If I wasn't used to it, I wouldn't be doing it. However, I always assume that a customer is going to be rude or forget something or make a silly request or otherwise be annoying. So it's not a big surprise when a customer requests something that requires me to go out my way to fix it. And, since most people are actually somewhat considerate, they tend to apologize. I say that it's not a problem and, most importantly, I mean it. This is just my job. It's not my job to care about you. It's to do what you ask in a reasonable amount of time. If I wasn't always aware of this, the requests might get on my nerves. No, it's not a problem that you're making me do twice the amount of work for you. It might, however, be a problem to those people in line who have been waiting a while. Sure, they might get cross with me for being so slow, but I would tell that I can only go as fast as I can and that it was that customer who wasted your time, not me. So, when I screw up, I feel bad about it because it's directly my fault. When other people screw up, I work patiently with them to alleviate the problem. I'm still being paid and everyone else is inconvenienced, but it's not my fault.

Now, I'm also supposed to do all these other things like put little bits of paper with their purchases and talk to them about some financial rewards system. This is bulls*** and a waste of time. Everything else, like helping to put their things away, is not bulls***. It's being helpful. And no, I don't do it for everyone; just people I like. It's just a sense of power. Aside from that, I don't do a lot of those other things. Personally, I hate it when someone comes to my door and wastes my time with some charity or otherwise tries to sell me something. Telemarketers or telesurveyors bug me too. So why should I, when I'm the one in control, do the same for these poor saps who come to see me? I know I wouldn't want to sift through wads of paper in every goddamn bag I get, so why should I subject it to others? Why should I talk to them about something I know they will not accept for even consider? It's a waste of my time, their time, and the other people in line's time. Besides, I don’t get a bonus for the number of people I sign up. If I did, that’d be my goddamn job and I’d hate it more than my current job. And time isn't something that should be wasted; not by choice, at any rate. That's why I don't think I'd be a good salesperson. I couldn't sell my soul to the lowest bidder if I had to. I have to actually like something in order to promote it. I can't just talk for hours on end about something I don't care about and then actually pressure someone into buying it. That'd just make me a hypocrite. I mean, if I'm going to be a salesperson, I might as well have long conversations with the other salespeople who come to my door.

So when I talk to my customers, I try to stick to business and possibly comment on something interesting to me. If possible, I keep things to a minimum and be polite with please, thank you, and you're welcomes. Why should it be any different? I know I don't like excessive chatting and small-talk when I'm in a hurry and I don't like to load anyone down with useless vocal garbage. All that chatting slows down efficiency and makes one lose focus on the work. I realize that some people will want to chat, and I'm fine to oblige. It's their time, not mine. I'm being paid for my time, partly with their money, so I don't care if I have to spew senseless chatter; sometimes it's even interesting to a degree and it's a good distraction from the tedium.

This is why I'm in the middle and why I'll never get a promotion. I'm not a people-person, but neither am I a rude anti-social bastard. I simply don't care about anything. Sure, not everyone will leave with a smile on their face or feel that they had exceptional customer service, but at least everything went smoothly and swiftly. Of course, if you don't have that winning personality, it's hard for the management to notice anything about you. Well, at least the manager is a pleasant fellow who knows my name and says hello. At least I know that if I ever want to move up, I can ask him about it and get an honest answer.

Helping people is not what I'm after. Giving people the best possible service isn't either. It's about solving their problem in the least amount of time and giving them what they want. But I'm not a humanitarian and I don't have a bubbly, positive attitude. I simply take in input and come out with an output, a solution. It might not be innovative and I am unlikely to offer you something better (and possibly more expensive), but simply what you want. And I don't do it out of a sense of helping, it's a sense of duty because I'm being paid to do it. If you want more, it's not a problem either, it's simply another task. It's only when people become difficult that I really want to throttle someone to death.


"I can't imagine a God who would care."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid."
Bishop, Aliens
Please read my journal "Late Night Philosophy" 
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