can I help you

"You made a mistake."

Anyone who's worked in any retail job has heard that line at some point.

Sometimes it's "I don't think this is right," or "were you born stupid, or did you become that way with time?"  Sometimes it's even "You fucking moron" or "I hope you die."

Before you even know what the problem is, you're being accused of a litany of things and the demand being made to fix the problem that you don't know about.  You then spend the next 15 minutes of your life trying to piece together what the problem is, often realizing it had nothing to do with your department.

Sometimes, it's not even a mistake, it's just a matter of the customer not understanding what's going on.  In pharmacy, it's usually a matter of them wanting a specific brand and you not carrying it or being allowed to dispense it, or their insurance not covering something or only allowing so many pills.

Yes, sometimes we made a mistake.  We filled it wrong, or billed it wrong, or miscounted the number of pills.

This isn't about whether we are capable of making a mistake or not. This is about how the way you approach someone determines the level of service you get.

Now some might say it shouldn't matter. The customer is always right so you should do what you can to fix the situation.  Well, several years in retail have taught me that the customer is very rarely right and in fact usually has no clue what's going on.  The truth also is no matter how level-headed you claim to be, when someone comes up to in a piss-poor mood, human nature kicks in.

It's hard to be nice to people who are being complete jerks to you.  It's as simple as that.  Sure, management tells you to just put on a happy face and trudge through it, but it's not that easy to do, especially if you have one after another that's complaining about what happened.  It's even worse when it's not actually your fault.

Why am I ranting about this?  I haven't had any particularly bad experiences lately, but feel the need to post this simply because I've seen a lot of people posting on my cell phone's community page complaining about the level of service they've received and how crappy they are and the phones suck.  I suppose I have trouble believing it's that bad because my girlfriend and I between us have never had trouble with them and when a phone did go wonky, the situation was resolved quickly.

After reading through a bunch of the complaints and the way people described the problem they were having, I have to say I'd be pretty crabby with them too.  More often than not, those trying to help the person complaining have to ask them to clarify the problem because it's so vague or poorly written.  Other times, you realize it's just because they don't understand how the phone works.

More often than not, unsatisfactory customer service complaints are because the service wasn't very good.  But what isn't mentioned is the attitude brought towards the person trying to help you.  When I have a problem, I'm nice until given a reason otherwise (ask insurances about how I can get).  If you seem to be trying to solve the problem, I'll continue to play nice.  Give me unnecessary attitude and I'll get snippy back, but usually I'll just request to speak to a supervisor.

Unless you're an insurance company.  I'm liable to hang up on your ass if you're not assisting me properly.

By properly, I mean blaming the software when the reality is you have no clue why I'm getting a rejection and you actually didn't go and ask anyone what it meant, you just sat and finished putting up your post on Facebook complaining about your job for the 37th time that week.  If you don't know, just tell me you don't know and pass me on to someone who might know.

In terms of my cell phone company, I know I'm biased.  I've been with them for over 8 years and have had virtually no problems with them.  When my phone took a swim, they replaced it.  When one of the next phones starting turning off repeatedly, they replaced it.  When the phone after that took a couple of jumps out of my hand, they replaced it even though I was the one who damaged it.  When my most recent phone went restart crazy?  Yup, replaced it.

Simply put, the kind of service you get often depends on how you approach the person helping you.  Granted, this isn't always true.  Sometimes there are just people who hate their lives and everyone around them so they really don't care.  They just want to collect their check and go without earning it.  I get that, but it's not a majority of people and if you're not happy with the service, you can always move on to a supervisor.

If you go in kicking and screaming, both parties are going to end up bruised and dissatisfied.  It's why when I always used to walk away when I dated a girl who's idea of being helped was to immediately give a cashier attitude if something didn't go how she wanted to go.  She was the type who'd refuse to leave the line until she was "properly" helped, which meant how she wanted to be helped.

Having worked in retail for years, I'm not quite as brash.  I realize that mistakes are made and sometimes cashiers are put in a tough spot.  The last thing I'm going to do is yell at someone for something that probably wasn't their fault.

I also realize that sometimes people are just snakebit.  You get a product, it doesn't work, you exchange it, it still doesn't work, they give you a different one, that doesn't work either.  I'd get frustrated too.  In that case, maybe it's time to move on and try a different line.

One complaint that stood out was the couple that was changing service providers.  They were unhappy with who they had so they were switching.  They had their phone numbers ported over and thought everything was good until they received a bill from their former carrier.  They complained, but to no avail.  The reason why they received a bill?  They didn't notify their former carrier they were switching.

That's the type of thing that makes me smack my hand in my face.  Do you really think any company is going to just stop billing you because you decide to walk away without saying so?  Hell, some will keep billing you even if you do notify them because you didn't notify them properly.  Then you'd be right to be mad.  But in this case?  It's on you to let them know you're canceling.

In the end, it's like anything else in life.  You get out of it what you put into it.  If you're bullish and mean from the start, the person on the other end of the phone is likely going to be combative.  If you're friendly, they'll be more receptive to your problem.

Give it a try sometime.