Likening customer service to purgatory is extreme but it feels like it some days so I'm working with the melodrama. For many reasons, I'm in a much better situation than most. Still, this line of work can't be my life forever. At least, when I leave, I can say that the way I view customer-facing workers has shifted drastically. For the better. Don't get me wrong, sometimes they suck, sometimes I myself will withhold help because I've been pissed off or I don't have the energy to attempt the task. But knowing why I fall into these pitfalls myself helps me be more forgiving of others who also do this; none of us are being paid or respected enough (by customers) to return favours.1 Big generalisation because most customers are fine, lovely even, but there are some really irritating encounters. I get harassed and undermined a lot. Emphasis on undermined, it's a very common occurrence for customers to ask the same question they asked me to one of my male colleagues, even though our answers are identical. I've been kissed without consent, threatened to be stalked, been told I should be out of a job, called racist remarks, etc. Even outside of this, there are so many technicalities and fragile infrastructures that make the job a ballache sometimes. Sometimes I want to actually help but I'm fighting internally with another department or a faulty laptop. Anyway, I've learned how to talk to people better, especially workers. I truly feel for healthcare workers, awkward teens behind the counter, offshore call centre workers even more underpaid and mistreated. At the end of the day, we're all so shaken by pessimism it's hard to feel like doing the job with any kind of enthusiasm is going to mean anything for us in the long term. Older generations seem to have it twisted that being mean and demeaning will get them what they want, as if customer service workers can't stand the thought of losing a customer or making one upset, when truthfully it's nothing now. People just want to project their frustrations onto the individual because the big conglomerates pulling their strings can't be told off. Some people really love any excuse to tell someone off and we're expected to go along with it because we "put ourselves in this situation." If you need to speak to their manager, do it. If a concern has to be escalated, escalate it. I'm not saying you should be conflict-averse. You just need to go in understanding that the worker's are meat shields for systems they probably also disagree with... Or you're being legitimately unreasonable. Lol. Footnotes For the record, 'doing favours' is not necessarily the same as 'doing the job.' I mean things like using loopholes, attempting non-conventional methods, or other out-of-process things for complicated situations.↩