Saturday, October 15, 2005
Pay No Attention to the Crappy Job Behind the Pizza
Last week was Customer Service week, which means it was a week in which management attempted to appease its pissed-off customer service reps by feeding them greasy pizza, stale popcorn and crumbly chocolate chip cookies and allowing everyone the privilege of wearing jeans for one day.
Someone even said to me, "Happy Customer Service Week." I looked at her blankly. Was she serious? Could she have been? My God. The horror. I was removed from this potentially embarrassing situation when she said, "Now only two pieces of pizza or one small sub and a cookie. We have to have enough for everyone." I just put my plate down. Sometimes the best solution is to fend for oneself. One can only be handed manure on a plate so many times before he realizes he can drop the plate.
I'm not a customer service rep anymore, so I've got that going for me. Bottom line, though: it's hard to watch stuff like that. Being a rep is like being back in high school. At first, you want to do really well. Impress people. Move up. Then you realize they don't care how well you do, just how much control they have over you. So you lose interest in their silly rules and focus on the bottom line. What's the bottom line? Depends on what kind of rep you are: A.) you give the customer the best you can; B.) you desperately scratch to find some way to make it through every day. At some point, it doesn't matter if you're an A rep or a B rep. You develop senioritis; you just want to get the hell out of there. You don't want their crappy policies, their fake smiles or their mindless rules.
And no two pieces of pizza, small sub or cookie will change that.
Someone even said to me, "Happy Customer Service Week." I looked at her blankly. Was she serious? Could she have been? My God. The horror. I was removed from this potentially embarrassing situation when she said, "Now only two pieces of pizza or one small sub and a cookie. We have to have enough for everyone." I just put my plate down. Sometimes the best solution is to fend for oneself. One can only be handed manure on a plate so many times before he realizes he can drop the plate.
I'm not a customer service rep anymore, so I've got that going for me. Bottom line, though: it's hard to watch stuff like that. Being a rep is like being back in high school. At first, you want to do really well. Impress people. Move up. Then you realize they don't care how well you do, just how much control they have over you. So you lose interest in their silly rules and focus on the bottom line. What's the bottom line? Depends on what kind of rep you are: A.) you give the customer the best you can; B.) you desperately scratch to find some way to make it through every day. At some point, it doesn't matter if you're an A rep or a B rep. You develop senioritis; you just want to get the hell out of there. You don't want their crappy policies, their fake smiles or their mindless rules.
And no two pieces of pizza, small sub or cookie will change that.
