Lori Duff Writes

I spent a good hour in customer service purgatory the other day.

The guy at the other end was super nice and tried very hard to be helpful, but he wasn’t especially skilled at his job. I knew what had to be done to resolve the problem, but he had to do it on his end, and I couldn’t get him to believe that I knew something he didn’t about his own job.

It was very frustrating. Had I not been crocheting a scarf as I listened to the awful and persistent hold music, it’s entirely possible that my head might have exploded off my neck.

I don’t blame the guy. He really was trying and obviously was just poorly trained. Still, it took every ounce of my considerable self- control not to scream,” listen to me, you incompetent emm- effer, just click whatever button gives me editorial access to this page!”

But what would that accomplish? Aside from ruining the day of someone who probably lives through a series of terrible days, given his choice of professions, and making me feel guilty for the next week or so, what would it do?

Nothing. Nothing at all. It wouldn’t make my problem get solved any faster, it wouldn’t have made this poor schlub any more competent, and it wouldn’t make the world a happier place to live in.

If I wanted to fix the problem, I should have asked for a supervisor after the fact and let that supervisor know that, while kind and eager, his employee did not have the tools to do the job. But, after an hour in the suburbs of purgatory, I was eager to return to regular Earth and I just hung up.

I see people giving line-level employees grief all the time. More often than not, their complaints are legitimate. And, nearly 100% of the time, the person behind the counter is the lowest paid employee in the whole operation and has exactly zero control over the situation. Does the seventeen-year-old working the register at Burger King for eight bucks an hour have anything to do with the fact that the store manager didn’t order enough hamburger patties for the day? Did the ticketing agent at the airport personally lose your luggage? I’m betting my paycheck that the cashier at Publix is not responsible for the leak in the coleslaw container that ruined your blouse.

So my point is this–I’m not saying you should roll over and simply accept lousy customer service as the norm. We should insist on businesses doing the jobs we pay them to do. Just- when you complain, make sure you’re talking to someone with the authority to solve the problem. Doo-doo, as they say, rolls downhill. So the line-level person you’re yelling at is likely already knee-deep in someone else’s feces. Don’t pile on the stinky if all it does is increase the stink in the air.

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  You can order her novella, “Broken Things”, by clicking here.  The audiobook can be found on Audible or iTunes.  You can pre-order her novel “Devil’s Defense” coming in November 2024.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.