This is ridiculous. You assume that everyone working in customer service had no other options. This is simply not true. Many people in customer service choose to be there. As hard as it is to believe, some people like it. I enjoyed waiting tables, for the most part. I only stopped because I wanted something more out of life, but I worked with plenty of “career waitresses” and waiters who chose that profession because they enjoyed it. Same with retail. Not everyone working in customer service took the job with a gun pointed at their head, as you so succinctly put it. Saying that everyone in customer service took the job under duress is just plain silly.
You pretty much don’t want a job where you have to deal with the general public. It sucks having to deal with people’s stupid questions or angry ranting. I speant years doing service jobs for near minimum wage. It’s tough to take your job seriously when you know you’re leaving in six months or less and you’re getting paid a pitience. How do you take your boss seriously when you are in college and you know in a few years this guy’s job would be a living joke to you?
I agree. These feelings can be vented in a variety of places. On message boards, to friends and family, to coworkers. There are other options besides being an asshole to innocent customers. I will repeat, I am not referring to rude customers as someone will inevitably come into this thread with guns a blazing with customer horror stories.
I repeat, the customer did nothing to deserve your ire. I worked a bunch of shitty jobs that I was miserable in but managed to not take out my misery on an unsuspecting customer. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable of a request.
Binary, I’m a college student working as a supermarket cashier for the summer and I think your argument is bullshit. There are things I don’t like about my job (like the fact that my feet are killing me after standing up for 6 hours on end with only a 15-minute break), but I would never think of taking it out on my customers by being rude. I try to treat them as I like to be treated when I’m shopping; after all, it’s not like they came to the supermarket with the express purpose of oppressing the proletariat. And frankly, I barely ever get rude customers. Most people are quite polite and friendly to the employees; why should I then be rude to them in return as a protest against some real or imagined injustice? Retail employees and other service workers who are rude to their customers in a feeble attempt to “stick it to the Man” are pathetic.
And I don’t think I’m underpaid either. Sure, I wish I was paid more, but that doesn’t mean the job is really worth higher pay. Lots of stores now have those do-it-yourself automatic checkout things. If my job requirements are such that I can be replaced by a robot, I deserve what I get! (Of course, I do think I’m overqualified, but until I get a job that requires the use of some higher brain functions, I’ll take what they give me.) Being that the only part of my job that can’t be replicated by a machine is listening to the customer’s needs and making friendly conversation, I don’t think that polite customer service is too much to ask.
But maybe I’m just a masochist. 
Oh, and another point: I think, at least in America, that almost all customers, excluding the super-rich, have had at least one shitty low-paying job in their lives, since most people start working before they have many marketable skills. Most of them are thus sympathetic to the plight of people working such jobs.
Which is not to say that there aren’t assholes. And from the responses in this thread, it sounds like you tech support people get a lot of them! 
But on the contrary, most people know what it’s like working for minimum wage or near it, and realize that it REALLY sucks to be treated rudely when that’s the case.
Hogwash. The service sector has always been paid shit wages, inflation or no. I agree that companies should pay more; I consider In & Out Burger to be a successful model of a fast-food chain that does exactly that. They pay higher wages than the other places, and have consistently better service and a better product as well. However, to say that low wages justifies rudeness is just b.s. - I worked at a fast-food place just out of high school for the ridiculously low wage of $3.35 an hour (good old Ronald Reagan seemed to think that the minimum wage didn’t need to increase with inflation), and I did the best job I could. By and large, I am happy with the service I get at most places, even the ones that only pay minimum wage. And on the rare occasions where the service is crappy, I have every right to complain about it.
I don’t think that rudeness is any excuse, no matter how shitty the job. I used to work retail, and could not bring myself to be rude—the customers did not deserve it. They hadn’t done anything wrong. I am a customer myself—I know how it feels to encounter a sullen, seething employee. I didn’t want to be one of those kind of people.
However, I worked hard for the nice customers, and if I had a boss I liked, I worked hard for her. But I had no respect or deference for the cheapwad guys at the head office. The hell with them.
Furthermore, I don’t think it’s shocking when an employee in a shit job just does the bare minimum expected of him (or her). He isn’t getting paid enough to bend over backwards. But surliness towards hapless customers? No, that’s not warranted.
Oh, and another thing, just based on my personal experience: The working class customers were usually the nicest. It was the rich people (and we had a lot of them) that were often the pains in the ass. Not all the time, but sometimes. And the cheapwads who complained because they couldn’t use their expired coupon saving 10 cents? Usually they were filthy rich.
Even one of my sisters, bless her heart, has never really had a “shit” job. She worked one job in college (the school library) and then it was on to a “real” job. She is not a mean-spirited person, she’s not even really a snob. (She knows she couldn’t pull it off with the rest of us as her embarrassing family! :eek: ) But she does not seem to possess the empathy for the working schlub. I’ve seen her be short and somewhat contemptuous of store clerks and waitresses. “I know how to handle these people.” That’s almost her attitude. And I am thinking, “You silly cow! Your sisters, you mom, your dad, your aunties—we ARE ‘these people!’”
I swear, I am afraid she’s going to get spit in her food one of these days. She doesn’t misbehave all the time, but still—yikes. I don’t want to be eating in a restaurant with her when she gets all high-and-mighty. Does that mean that she would “deserve” spit in her food if she were acting bitchy to the wait staff? Absolutely not! It’s criminal to spit in food, not to mention vile. But she’s taking a chance when she behaves with less empathy. Because not all people in shit jobs are honorable when they are treated with contempt.
I totally agree with you Yosemitebabe, but that’s not even what we’re talking about. That’s why I kept saying in all of my posts “I’m not talking about rude customers”. The OP and one or two of his supporters seem to think that being paid a low wage gives the green light to be rude in general, even when it’s not warrented.
That’s just not right.
It may just be that I am not getting my point across. I specifically am not saying that low wages justify customer service folks being rude. As I think that I have made most clear in my posts, rude behavior is never acceptable. What I am saying is that low wages (among other factors) create an environment where rude behavior is the inevitable consequence. A fine distinction, but I believe an important one.
This quote, although the poster claims to disagree with me, almost perfectly supports that position.
Finally, ** Already in Use**, while I admire your work ethic, I would respectfully suggest that your behavior as a customer service worker is not a good benchmark from which to measure what I am talking about. I am making some assumptions here, but simply stated I am assuming that you are not going to college to become a minimum wage worker in a grocery store. However distant, there is an end in sight for you. The picture is really quite different if you are looking at this sort of a thing as a career.
No, you weren’t getting it across at all. In fact, your OP sounds very much like you are saying that we have no right to complain when we encounter bad service:
No, I don’t think it was clear. Thanks for clarifying.
Not at all. I agree with you that businesses would be better off paying their employees a decent wage, but I most certainly do not see rude behavior as an “inevitable consequence” of minimum wage. Not in any way, shape, or form. In & Out’s service is exemplary, but you apparently missed the part of my post where I said that I consider, by and large, the service to be quite adequate at other places as well. When an employee is rude to me, I consider it an unusual situation, not “inevitable” at all. And your suggestion that we “lay off” such people is ridiculous.
Well, lets chase that for a bit. It is my assertion that there is a consensus that the quality of customer service has been in decline for quite a while. I suppose that if you disagree with me on that point, we probably don’t have a whole lot more to talk about. However, assuming that you agree we can continue.
My hypothesis is that this is directly linked to the decline of wages. I have not been able to dig up a whole lot of cites, but I read this study* based on Census data as indicating that real wages (adjusted for inflation so that we are looking at what the dollar was worth) have been in a steady decline since 1973.
So, I am willing to hear other explanations (again, always assuming that you do agree with my first point)
*before anyone gets started, I realize that the cite is coming from a labor organization type web page and thus could be dismissed as liberal. That said, their data seems sound and so I don’t think that an agenda is being introduced.
You people keep saying that shit-job workers are somehow obligated by society to give $80 worth of service for $8.00 worth of wages. Binarydrone has made it clear that he does not feel that low wages JUSTIFY bad service, but that he feels it’s a logical consequence of them (I share his opinion).
How do YOU justify your demand that shit job workers do work that is so much more valuable than their pay? If someone said you had to sell $80 shoes for $8, you’d laugh at them. Why shouldn’t WE laugh at YOU?
Oh, yeah, and some people like shit jobs and for their very own reasons and I can respect that. But I bet if everyone who didn’t like shit jobs were to leave them one day, the shit job economy would collapse.
And any moment now we should have a Capitalist apologist on the scene declaiming in his self-righteous way that the worker contracted to do so and that if they don’t like it they should quit and get another job. Ah I love how the wheel turns.
I am far from a Capitalist apologist but I do have to ask this: who decides what $8.00 an hour worth of work is? The employee? In that case, I can suddenly decide that the current amount of work I do for my employer is worth $100,000 a year instead of $40,000 and be rude to my coworkers and people who call. After all, they’re not paying me nearly what I’m worth, so why should I make any effort whatsoever to do a good job? You see the problems with that theory? That’s why we have contracts that we sign when we begin work stating very clearly what is expected of us when we take our jobs. (Well, most people do, I actually had no such thing in my job I’m just saying it for arguments’ sake.)
Binarydrone, your OP was far from clear and after your clarification I still have a hard time understanding how you’re not condoning rude behavior from low paid employees. Saying that it’s a logical consequence and for us to “lay off” rude employees sounds a little too close for comfort to justifying rudeness from those employees.
There’s also a problem with your hypothesis. Society in general has changed over past few decades. Overall, I’d say we’re a ruder class of people than we were in the 1950’s, something that’s reflected in the media, in politics and pretty much everywhere. I don’t think you can pin rudeness in customer service on decline in pay, there are too many other factors that weigh in.
And I just realized that you wrote the decline started in 1973, so ignore my comment about the 50’s. Doesn’t change the problem with your hypothesis though. Society has changed dramatically since the early 70’s.
I don’t want to get into the whole economics thing here because this isn’t a Great Debate, but if you agree to accept a job at a certain pay, why all of a sudden is it not worth doing well? Forget well, how about just doing it competantly?
Where does this sense of entitlement come from? It’s not just limited to minimum wage workers. There are people making $5 to $500 an hour who feel that “this job is beneath me so why should I put any effort in”.
As I have stated, it is a very fine point but (IMHO) an important one. Perhaps it is only my pure and good nature coloring things here 
, but at the heart of things I would say that, looking at the power dynamic involved, it is easier for the customer to take the high road than it is for the laborer.
That said, I am very intrigued by some other points that you have made in your post. Specifically that we are a much ruder society than we were in the 50’s and 70’s (I am extrapolating the 70’s one from your post, but I would tend to agree).
To what factor or factors do you attribute this change? I would still tend to think that economic factors, especially the decline of personal wealth, are a huge if not pivotal factor but I would be most interested to hear your take on this.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Binarydrone, but basically, you’re saying, “You get what you pay for.”
Yes?
You know, that is not really too far from the point.
I concur.
But what exactly are you trying to argue with this thread? You acknowledge that rude behavior isn’t justified, but that low wages create it and that customers should accept that. So what should the customer do if he doesn’t want to be treated rudely? Only go to stores that pay what he considers a decent wage? Write letters to CEOs of companies, or perhaps to people in government, demanding a living wage? (What if this then drives up the cost of goods and thus the cost of living? Oh God, I hope I didn’t just hijack this thread into an economic debate…) Tip?
I think we’re all in agreement that rudeness is never justified per se, but you seem to be saying the customer should just expect it to be the natural consequence of low wages. I disagree.