Just get another job (on the service sector)

The BBQ Pit
41

You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth. Your OP seemed to very clearly be criticizing those who complain about bad service. You linked to threads where such complaints were voiced. You suggested that those people “lay off”. I got that you disapproved not of those who are rude TO employees, but basically anyone who complains about poor service at any time. You did not seem to be saying “don’t be rude to service employees”, but rather “you have no right to be upset by bad service”. Could you please explain how that is NOT the same as justifying bad service?

Your link regarding real wages is interesting, but it’s not really germane to the topic at hand unless it’s broken down between the service sector and other occupations.

And what do you mean by “high road”? Does that mean putting up with lousy service?

42

I remember the day that a customer took a dump on my floor. They even had toilet paper and wiped. The paper was stuck to a book about Corvettes. I always treat customers and customer service people with respect. I don’t poop in the auto sections of the local bookstores.

-Rev Bloodytoe

43

The turnover for 6.75 an hour jobs is huge. People work at one place for a few months (if that) and then move to another service sector job for a few months. A consequence of this fact is that there’s nearly always a spot open someplace to work.

Do you really think low-wage workers receive adequate training? If you’re hiring someone who may only be around a month or two, are you going to bother to take one or two weeks to make sure your employee understands how to use all the machinary and equipment, and can ring things up on the cash register quickly if there’s a huge line, and understands the behavior that’s expected when interacting with customers? It wouldn’t make any economic sense to train your employee – you’d probably have him work the first day and hope he picks it up, because you’d assume he won’t be sticking around too long and you don’t want to sink a week or two of training into someone who isn’t a permanent employee. Aside from that, training requires two people — teacher and student – and employers don’t want to waste the money on an essentially “transient” employee, one who will probably leave the job the moment he finds something that pays an extra dollar an hour.

Now, imagine if that same job paid its employees, say, 10.00 an hour. The employers would have a pick of a larger pool of applicants – that alone would allow them to choose people who are more likely to want to be there, rather than living hand-to-mouth and taking the job out of desperation. They’d be assured of an employee base that would be relatively permanent, so it would make sense, suddenly, to take some time and train the employee carefully. As a lot of people have said previously in this thread, there’d suddenly be economic incentive for those workers to not merely do the least amount of work expected of them – which is basically what surly service is – but to take time with their job and put some more effort into a job that they won’t be able to replace so easily.

And I think that’s what the OP is saying – not that poorly-paid workers have a right to be rude and incompetent, or that the customers have no right to be upset about it, but that it’s a natural consequence of the current system.

44

As I have stated, the point is a very fine one. Naturally, you have the right to be upset by bad service. No one can stop you. You also have the right to be upset about the weather. So what.

It may be that we are getting caught up in semantics here. When you say that I am justifying rude behavior, what that means to me is that I am in some way endorsing it or condoning it, and that is not true. Again, what I am saying is that this rude behavior is the inevitable result (or consequence) of the way that the system is set up.

That being the case, I guess that what I am saying when I tell folks to lay off the CSR folks is that they should stop shaking their little fists at the sky because the don’t like the rain. That, for the most part, their lives are pretty horrible as it is, that a CSR can’t just “get another job” if they are unhappy, and that it will cost nothing for the customers to not add to the problem. The customer can take the “high road” by meeting rudeness with kindness, not making the laborer’s life more difficult and in general not contributing to the problem.

And there you have it. I have put forward the hypothesis that the quality of customer service, as a whole, is in a decline. I have stated that it is my belief that the wages that these folks receive is a deciding factor in this and I have given a cite showing that wages on the whole have been in decline since 1973 (which is interesting (to me) in the context of lezlers’ statement that we are more rude as a society).

You seem to disagree with me and, at least in a backhand way, are calling me a hypocrite. This is fine, in so far as it goes, but I would be interested to hear your take on the phenomenon. I am not above having my point of view change, but need for you to explain to me how it is that you disagree

45

THANK YOU. It is nice to know that I am being understood by at least some folks. I honestly didn’t think that the point that I was making was that nuanced or complicated.

46

Binarydrone - I wasn’t so clear on your point in the OP, but as you developed it, I realized more where you were coming from.

Here’s a half-formed, totally unresearched thought to be pulled to shreds: The timing you’re giving for the decline of customer service (somewhere around the seventies) seems to me to coincide with the boom in chain stores and chain restaurants (Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc.), and the beginnings of their… I don’t want to use the word monopoly, but I can’t think of a better one. But it does seem that, nowadays, the majority of shoppers frequent the large conglomerates, rather than small, privately-owned business.

Now, in a privately owned store or restaurant, in many cases the owner’s livelihood is totally dependent on the customer service, even to the point where many of them work in their own stores. So it is of crucial importance that they have good customer service and good employees, and that they retain those employees. If customer service goes down the toilet and people stop coming, then you’ve lost your income entirely, and you’re scrambling to sell the store and find a new job.

When you get into the chain operations, however, it’s a different story. I mean, let’s face it, when it’s a billion burgers served, folks, the customers are less important than they used to be. You’re not going to eat there anymore? Fine. Someone else will and the odds are, you’re just transferring your business to the McDonald’s across town. Furthermore, should a store or two have to close for whatever reason, it doesn’t affect the owners very much. They’ve got fifty outlets left. They’ll adjust. It just isn’t as important to have good customer service when you are one of a very few games in town.

I’m not blaming them for everything, certainly. But it’s something to consider, anyway.

47

That’s actually a really good theory look!ninjas.

Binarydrone, I don’t want you to think I’m abandoning this thread, I’ll be back with some facts to support my take on your theory later

48

Okay, back a little sooner than I thought.

Found some interesting things out there.

http://www.probe.org/docs/civility.html : this is a really intesting site giving mulitple examples of the general decline of manners in our society.

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0FQP/4467_128/59134985/print.jhtml : this is a great site exploring various possible reasons for the decline in our society as well as giving an example that possibly serves to directly debunk your hypothesis through an example of the manners in Tanzania:

This last site explores the theory that our civilization is in a state of destruction. Don’t know if I completely buy into it but it does explore various examples of the decline of manners in our society as well: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/shaffer7.html

49

As the originator of one of the linked threads, I feel compelled to say that I have never been rude to a customer, and I don’t think that rudeness (note: my definition of rudeness does NOT include defending oneself against customers who are abusive) is ever justified.

That said, I agree with the OP. I don’t think that paying people more will magically make them more competent (Even claiming the OP is making that statement is a strawman, IMHO). I think the pay issue is one slice of a pie called respect. When I read Nickel and Dimed, I glowed at reading Ehenreich(sp?)'s statement that service workers are philanthropists in that they do all the things that make white-collar workers lives easier, while not getting to enjoy those conveniences themselves.

When I worked in food service after having worked retail for a year, I saw a marked difference in how I was treated. This is because of the “Duderude2” mentality, which is “People with McJobs are all idiots who don’t deserve my respect, because if they were REALLY intelligent and worthwhile they wouldn’t be on that side of the counter in the first place”.
I already talked about this in my Low-end baristas thread, but order-takers seem to endure quite a bit of unprovoked rudeness. Service people are used like Kleenex by managers (who are usually traitors, since they used to be just like their underlings, yet gleefully pull out the bullwhip as soon as they get a foot in the Management Door) and abused by customers. Something’s gotta give.

50

Maybe I misread Evil Captor’s post. I read it as meaning that after a certain point a person is not going to be willing to bust his ass day in and day out with no end in sight when he is only receiving a pittance for his labor. Nowhere in his post did I read that he excused rudeness.

51

I do not excuse rudeness in the sense that I think it is a good thing, but I have to say that today at Target when there were no less than four store clerks standing next to our checkout lane talking and not one of them lifting a finger to help bag stuff, I wasn’t surprised or even particularly mad at them. I didn’t excuse it, but I understood it.

52

I just find your attitude incredibly ironic, considering you started this thread to shake your little fist at people who had legitimate gripes about bad service. You’re saying bad service is not o.k., but people shouldn’t complain about it. WTF? Your point is so “fine”, that it doesn’t exist at all. Sorry to sound cliched, but if you don’t like the threads, don’t read them. I’m not disagreeing with your theory (I don’t think you’ve proven it one way or the other, but it’s reasonable to assume it might be true); I just don’t understand your invective against consumers who complain.

53

So, let me see if I understand you here. You think that I may be correct, but don’t think that I should be putting forth my views. Rather than contribute anything to the discussion, you would rather take little pokes at me. Got it. :rolleyes:

54

I think a lot of people are upset with this thread topic is that one of the defenses when you find yourself stuck in shit job for whatever reason is to say, “OK, I’m in a crap job, but I’m still a good person, and as evidence of my personal goodness, I will do the finest job I can, not because I think I will be inevitably rewarded for it, but because doing the best I can is part of who I am, whether it’s expected of me or not.”

This is a commendable attitude, and builds self-esteem, but is pretty hard to maintain for more than a few months in a shit job.
Still, nobody likes to hear that you shouldn’t even TRY, even if it’s true.

I’m completely in agreement with attempts to maintain one’s self-esteem even under trying circumstances, but I think they need to be coupled with a hard awareness of the circumstances in which yo’re working, and an eye to how they might be changed.

55

Uh, I saw it more as him saying that bad service is not o.k., but here’s a possible contributing factor why.

It’s like a schoolyard bully. His bullying is never OK, and should always be stopped and punished. However, if he is abused by his daddy, then that is one clue as to why he is behaving this way. Doesn’t excuse anything, but does point at a solution.

56

All I can say is: No, that’s not it at all. Try again.

57

Dude, they treat you right at Nordstroms? Those people won’t even tell me where the bathrooms are (though they will point out the exits).

58

No kidding? I used to work there and believe me, the employees are brainwashed on a regular basis to do any and everything the customer wants to make him/her happy, short of a bj in the bathroom. Sucks if you work there, not bad if you’re a customer.

59

I agree that getting paid low wages is probably a contirbuting factor to poor customer service. Certainly it is an excuse for the excuse makers, but it is not a legitimate reason at all. The real problem is not that people are not paid enough, it is that we now live in a society of victims that seem to find every slight as an excuse for their actions. Add to that some growing sense of entitlement (“I deserve to be paid more.”) and you get the situation the OP seems to be defending (yes, I read the parts about not defending it but explaining it, but what is the poiint of wanting to explain it if not to defend it?).

The bottom line is your job is to serve the customer, if you can’t do that properly, whether it is because you feel slighted on payday or because your girlfriend was sleeping with your brother, then that is your problem and not the customers and not the people who pay you. Your excuses are meaningless to me. Don’t liek your job, then quit. Can’t quit? then suck it up and be fucking responsible.

60

Hear hear Gangster ( I love your SN by the way). I also think the “victim mentality” running so rampent nowadays is also a contributing factor.

It’s always someone else’s fault.