America Wants to Speak to a Manager

Whatever. I’m still waiting on my refund from Bed Bath and Beyond, after talking to one of their underpaid CSRs with her kids screaming in the background. Fuck their business.

Great title.

R1 Angela is that you girl?

Yeah no. Customer service has taken a dive. I know its cool to bash on things but people work hard for their money and that needs to be taken into consideration as well.

Karenism is trending but have you ever waited on a party of black people? Lets just say we all have our faults. Equally.

Really R5? You are going to generalize all POC?

R5 I have and it is awful. No one, not even other black servers, want to wait on black folks. They're rude, loud, demanding, try to fight paying part of the bill and leave little or no tip no matter how accommodating you and the staff are. For some reason many black people consider 5-10% a 'good tip.'

Tipping should be done away with and included in the bill. Sugarfish does this and it seems to work.

R6 Way to miss the point!

How I am missing the point?

I have never been asked to see my manager until I worked in hospitality and waited on black women. Now, the point is not the manager situation, it is that one group can be called out on it and another can’t. Its no big deal! All cultures have their kinks, its okay! But everyone should be able to hear about it.

[QUOTE] How do you measure rage? For many years, Scott M. Broetzmann, now president and chief executive of a consulting firm called Customer Care Measurement and Consulting, has been conducting studies of consumer anger. The next iteration is set to come out this spring. He almost can’t believe what he has seen during the pandemic.

[QUOTE]“When we founded the study, I never thought that the environment would be like it was today,” he said. “I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined that we would be seeing people fighting on planes and beating each other up.” Last spring, he said, his early-morning flight from Washington to Phoenix was delayed for 45 minutes while a drama over a man and a mask played out in the back. The final scene: The man was escorted off in disgrace.

When I used to wait tables a coworker used to describe waiting on some black parties as “run honkey, run”

Social media has made people hate each other and the hate has been brewing for over a decade. The pandemic brought it all to a boiling head. Everyone hates each other. If we didn’t know so much about one another it wouldn’t be this way. Humans are over-exposed to one another and this is the result. We are sick of ourselves, a diseased culture. What will put the cat back into the bag? Remember when Instagram went out for like 7 hours and everyone felt a relief they haven’t felt in a long time? And then went right back to it when it came back on and posted about how happy they were that it seemed to have disappeared forever? We are an enslaved, diseased, dumbed down culture; groomed to consume and consume. And now, fight.

Customer service is so bad these days that I don’t speak up because I know that will just make it worse for me. I just try to neutralize it.

We are ALL Karen.

I got into a screaming match with someone at the top of Laurel Canyon last week (Angelinos will understand what that means). As much as that person was in the wrong, I was taken back at how quickly I became enraged by an entitled motorist attempting to cut off drivers waiting their turn. I was furious and it scared me.

It is not a coincidence that bad behavior overall has escalated simultaneously with the fear of lost white supremacy.

R17 I bet you feel so smart when you parrot things like that. Well Done.

R16 someone gave me major road rage at that intersection too. I was in the wrong lane and had to get over and this guy was so angry he stuck his hand out the window and gave me the finger like a psycho. It inconvenienced him for maybe 3 seconds.

R7 No. What happens is you overlook the poor behavior of white people and only focus on when black people are acting up.

I was the same exact way when I was younger and went into customer service.

I’ve worked with the public for 16 years, the idea that white people are nice and civil and respectful is completely false.

I’ll say this again. Most of the white US is white trash. To select the white middle class of New York City and Boston or Chicago or the suburbs as the models of white people is a white delusion.

R17 must be a white first year college idiot.

R21 Right because the majority of the crazy right / MAGA / anti-vaxxers / anti-Maskers / Covid hoax conspiracy theorists AREN’T white.

DL is funny.

Probably the same people always talking about proper and civil white people are compared to black people are the same exact people complaining about MAGA, Republicans, and Anti-Vaxxer’s / Anti-Maskers (who are majority white) in other thread.

Like PICK. Either white people are the greatest or they’re mostly filled with Christian white redneck trash. You can’t have both when you want to put down and attack another race.

R20 And you are only focusing on white people acting up. Newsflash, America is comprised of trash of all colors thanks to decades of greed and corrupt leadership. The country is garbage all around.

It’s both. People tend to take everything as personal slights these days. Also, customer service in the US is worse. If you travel to places like Japan, for instance, and come back here you’ll lament even more about the shitty level of customer service in the US.

R24 Say that instead of saying black people are the worst in customer service.

They’re not. It’s racist people hate dealing with them.

Black people do tip less and it’s usually because they get shit service. Those waiters who see the “black people coming” get tipped shitty because they’re racist or self-hating. Treat them better and you’ll get a better tip.

R26 Wow

R26 Are you a suburban liberal white mom who has no black friends? Because thats what you sound like.

Apparently, the writer of this missive has never dealt with Verizon customer service in any way.

R25 I have to defend customer service.

Customers are absolutely horrific. Difficult, entitled, demanding, rude, cheap, etc. It’s common knowledge working with the public is a nightmare.

People think they have the right to treat you like trash or a servant from the employers to the customers.

Customer service jobs are struggling with employment because people are done dealing with it.

The “customer is always right” ideology needs to go.

I’m 34 but I believe public social etiquette and manners have declined and mega stores like Walmart and Target have had a negative impact on behavior in customers and employees. On top of the fact that department stores have declined as careers opportunities and pay. Working at Macys in 2022 isn’t the same as working as Macys in the 80’s or 90’s.

I started working at JCPenney in 2005 at 18. I got 40 hours a week / health and dental care / vacation time and sick pay. During the recession by the time I worked at Old Navy in 2007 at 20, they had gotten rid of that stuff for customer service employees and only offered benefits to managers and supervisors and it works like that now.

But customers are spoiled rotten. I remember customers return shit stained underwear and ripped up pantyhose. With NO receipts on top of it! And it would usually be a fight until the manager had to step in and override the register to return them.

So don’t talk about how bad customer service is to me lol.

R28 No I’m biracial and I know what it’s like to eat out with my white family and the service I get vs. eating out with my black family and the service I get.

And there’s a big difference.

In different bars and restaurants around Boston, they stop serving Heineken at 9.

For white people who don’t know, it’s the choice of beer for black people.

Service employees generally don't make enough money to give a shit about anything. Employers are lucky they even show up for work consistently, as most have 1 or 2 other jobs. I have worked places where management expects you to cover for company wide shortfalls like being short staffed, not having enough resources, and I imagine COVID has taken these things to the extreme.

You can only apologize to customer so much, I kindly let those rude ones know I was just a messenger for people at the top who have no clue what was really going on.

R5 is whiter than a polar bear in a January blizzard.

Employers have been used to being in the drivers seat for a generation and have treated employees like disposable wipes. That is over. The flip side, of course, is that the public still wants to treat employees like disposable wipes too and is having a tantrum that they can't.

I was a Karen at the New Years Eve 8:15pm viewing of Spiderman last night. We were in the back of the rows. The very back row behind us are the handicap seats. One of these 2 with women in those handicap seats was on her fucking cell phone TALKING LOUDLY through the previews. About 1/2 through the previews I turned around to say 'Really, you are being so RUDE' in my best white privilege voice. And of course, they act all 'what are you up in my business' grumbling. But they 'mostly' shut the fuck up the rest of the movie, and they left quickly without any confrontation. Person in front of us flashing his cell phone; person to the right in the next section flashing their cell phone light. Babies crying, young adolescents taking out loud during the movies. So you know the next level up, is Karen and Steve more. This New Yearar, I am buying the biggest theater size screen TV, and stay the fuck out of the theaters.

About 2 months ago, my partner and I went to go see Matteo Lane. The opening female comedienne had to call out people talking during her in the front left of her. She said, I'm being nicer than Matteo would. Matteo had to do the same to people to his right in the front. So... What did they learn when the warmup act called out the audience members first?. Nothing. And you know they were faggots at a Matteo show. People are shit. We have lost civility in this nation, over SIMPLE etiquette. Thanks you Real Housewives of Nothing to Offer Anybody.

Working with the public was a large part of my employment for many many a year. I noticed the change in attitude over the years, and would try to figure out what was going on. My take on it was finally that each person's ego has a certain amount of need, varying from person to person, to feel as if it is under its own power and not answerable to others. With an increasing amount of strictures in daily life and/or society as time goes on, people commensurately feel increasingly personally disempowered, and so automatically try to reach their "standard need-setting of personal power" and so compensate by overdoing it when they conceive that they do in some little personal situation have some tiny wisp of power, as when they're with waitstaff or clerks or other such employees. Defying common etiquette is another way they attempt to regain personal power. No idea what the solution is.

R36 Absolutely no civility whatsoever. It is so embarrassing.

R32 Why is that, do you think?

R19, if you made a mistake, commit to your mistake and just turn, then correct yourself.

R36 it’s enough to make one want to move to Japan, where that kind of behaviour doesn’t happen.

[quote]People think they have the right to treat you like trash or a servant from the employers to the customers.

Hence the word "service" in customer service.

It's not the job to absorb abuse and ill-treatment from anyone. Sorry, Ivanka.

TAKE A NUMBER CUNT!

[QUOTE] It's not the job to absorb abuse and ill-treatment from anyone. Sorry, Ivanka.

As far as the bosses are concerned, it is.

Maybe that's why the bosses are so irritated they can't hold on to employees.

R46 Absolutely and Gen Z is coming of age and say what you want about her them but they’re the generation least likely to take shit from a job.

Anybody who goes to a Spiderman movie deserves what happens to them in a theater. Including snipers in a not happy mood.