On the Management of Customer Care

Dearest Michael, and all other customer care mangers of the world,

In an uncertain world, I feel lucky every time I settle on something that I know to be a fact.  My favorite variety of fact is the kind arrived at following a long period of discovery.  The sort of fact that comes with life experiences.  Like...

Fact: the Greek style yogurt really IS worth the extra 30 cents at the supermarket

Fact: learning to ride a bicycle is much easier when you are under the age of 25

Fact: the only thing worse than shopping in a store owned by a monstrous corporate machine is working in a store owned by a monstrous corporate machine.

One doesn't need a crystal ball to predict what would happen if I revealed the hour and day of my visit.  One simply needs some experience working in a monstrous corporate machine (MCM).  Fortunately, I spent seven years waiting tables in a place where the menus had pictures and the soundtrack was dictated by "corporate."  A place in which, if you ever had a grievance, you were told, "Take it up with corporate."  A place that (shudder) had people with titles like "regional manager" and "secret shoppers."  

I know EXACTLY what would happen to every single person assigned to that shift.  They would be told there was a "Mandatory Meeting."  Signs on colored paper would be taped in the bathrooms and break room.  "Mandatory Meeting on such and such a day at such and such a time.  All Employees Must Attend."

If some poor apron questioned the pimple-faced 12 year old manager, the apron would be told, "It's mandatory.  No big deal, just show up."  No additional information would be provided, and a current of frustration and worry would start to flow through the smoke breaks and lunch times.  Layoffs?  Annoying team building exercises?  A test?  What is this meeting about?  

By the time the meeting happens, one person has figured out what it is about and therefore everyone already knows.  Because the staff discovered the purpose of the meeting via leaked information or subterfuge of some kind (rather than open and honest communication) everyone arrives annoyed, sharply aware of their expendable and powerless position in the company, and preemptively dismissive of any information the meeting presents.  Many have to come on their day off.  Some have to take time off another job just to make it, since skipping the mandatory meeting, the taped-up notes insinuated, jeopardized one's job.

Presiding over the meeting is a slightly overweight white male wearing blue chinos and a blue button down oxford shirt.  If you want to be a regional manager, you had better fit the above profile.  You also must hate your life.  You must hate your life in the particular way a regional manager hates his life, however.  For example, you must smile.  Picture a very, very ugly room that is poorly constructed, dark, and terribly decorated.  Now paint it bright purple but do nothing else to fix it.  That is exactly the sort of smile you need to be regional manager.

Everyone comes in slowly and sits as far away from the regional manager as possible.  The regional manager says hello to people according to spec - most MCMs have a specific script for greetings and the regional manager always adheres to spec.  So he will say, "Hello (glances at name tag) what can I help you build today?"  Or whatever.  Anyway, the more annoying it is the more effective he imagines himself to be.

He will use some sort of corporate-mandated assistant for his talk.  Either a powerpoint or a manual or something.  Whatever the circumstances, the following lines are guaranteed:

"Without the customer we don't have...what...somebody finish the sentence...what don't we have?"

Blank stares.  Someone finally says, "Jobs."

"Right!  Jobs!  Without the customer, I don't get paid.  And neither do you."

"What does the customer want?"

"Anybody?"

"I'm gonna level with ya..."  [this one is particularly unhelpful, given the fact that the whole manner in which the meeting was called already made it quite clear that there is no 'let's be honest with each other because we're a community of equals' kind of crap going on in this MCM]

"What's our mission statement?"

"Anybody?"

Yada yada yada.  The meeting usually ends with some kind of activity or quiz and everyone is reminded that performance evaluations determine whether or not they get raises and hey, have a great day if this is your day off!

Now, Mr. Customer Care Manager, if you want your people to treat other people well, treat them like people.  My guess is everyone in there hates her job.  But I have had plenty of "crappy" jobs, in terms of pay or the work I was doing, that I didn't hate.  Usually, though, they were jobs working for small, independent businesses.  Coincidence?  Probably not.  Give everyone in an apron a day off.  Paid.  And don't send in the blue shirt guy.   

Home Depot: you can't do it, and they can't help you

Welcome to this June, my first ever June without work.  Normally, in spite of being a teacher, I work in the summer.  Not so this year.  Betty Friedan should have warned we modern females of the "summer vacation mystique."  As a person who rather enjoys her job but looks ever forward to the break at the end of the school year, this elusive summer vacation has been held up as the greatest 2.5 months of every teacher's life.  It's a time to enjoy a slower day, read more books, listen to music, get things done that just didn't make the to-do list during the busy school year, plan for next fall, and just plan relax.

No one tells you that if you only have one thing to do all day it is nearly impossible to get that thing done.  Give me an astonishing amount of work to accomplish in not enough time, and I can do it.  Ask me to run to Home Depot to pick up a simple thing today....and I'll have it done by next week sometime.  

Here's another thing I didn't know.  Apparently, when you are a teacher with the summers off and you are approaching 30 years of age, June, July and August become one long marathon of HGTV.  When you start talking about bird watching in your yard, you're old.  When you start talking about what you've done to the new bathroom, you are old in training.  

I admit it.  I can't stop talking about my own home improvement projects.  And I don't even own this place!  I guess it's like when people who want to have children buy dogs and begin displaying weirdly parental behaviors toward their Weimaraners.  It would seem even we the childless aren't totally immune to certain degree of "settling down."  Getting married.  Shopping for a house.  All of these behaviors feel exactly the same as trying on grandma's clothes when I was 8.  Extremely fun, but somehow not my own.

Of all the things I have done so far in this summer of domestic boot camp, finally making the solo trip to Home Depot was the least enjoyable.  I went in with what I thought was a simple request.  I wanted to find a test-kit to make sure my kitchen floor tiles didn't contain asbestos.  I went to the customer service desk and waited in line.  There was only one elderly couple in front of me, but all four orange aprons were consumed by whatever they needed.  I waited for about three minutes until another apron walked by and I asked her where I could find the asbestos test kits.

"Asbestos?"

"Yes, I'm ripping up my kitchen tiles but I want to make sure they don't contain asbestos before I do that."

Blank stare.  Pause.

"Oh, ok.  That would be in plumbing."

I must have looked skeptical, and I was.

"Well I think so anyway, let me check."

She uses a walkie-talkie to get plumbing to confirm her thoughts.  They don't answer but somebody in Paint does, and they claim to have it in aisle 40.

Great.  I walk to aisle 40, which is filled with lighting supplies.  Big sparkly ceiling light fixtures.  Etc.  Not paint and certainly not test-kits of any sort.

I go to the end of that aisle and approach the now 6th apron I have seen.  He also looks shocked at the mention of asbestos, which surprises me because it says right on the box of tiles we bought to make sure and check for the stuff before laying down new tiles.

He uses his walkie-talkie because he thinks it will be in flooring.  Flooring confirms that yes, it will be in flooring.  He tells me to go to flooring. 

On my way to flooring several aprons ask me if I need help and I make sure I'm going in the right direction, to flooring.  A nice gentleman tells me he's "going that way anyway" and will escort me (because god forbid someone actually like see me through to the end of this very fucking simple task).  We get almost to flooring when apron #9 sees someone he knows and stops the cart to chat with these folks.  I contemplate heading to flooring, which is now in my sights, on my own but I figure this guy is invested in me now and he'll make sure that if it isn't there he will find out where it is.

It isn't there.  

He radios someone in paint, and they swear it's in paint.  I walk like 7 miles back to paint, where, through extended consultations with two additional aprons, there is no such test kit.  

Enter: Manager.  He is about 12 and needs exercise, sunlight, and acne medication.  He also needs an inventory lesson because he has "no idea if we carry something like that."  He is also the fourth apron to say "Asbestos?" and wrinkle his brow as if he had never heard of such a substance.  

My favorite part is that each apron, upon discovering that they didn't know the answer to my question, looked at ME like I was the idiot.  If anything was going to make me grateful for my break from the Department of Education, this was it.  

 

just in case you have the audacity to feel like going for a run at night, ladies, here is a guide

Here is my step by step guide to running at night in the city as a female:

7:40 pm - Wonder if you should use headphones, as you could not hear an attacker behind you if you use them

7:45 pm - Put in your headphones, but turn down the volume

7:46 pm - standing on the front steps, looking at the sky, ask "is it too dark already?"

7:50 pm - Running, looking at the trees in bloom, have the following argument with yourself: "I want to run on the gravel by the reservoir, my feet don't hurt so bad when I run on the gravel...yeah but there aren't any street lights over there...fine I'll run on the street...you are really going to let yourself be scared into doing something you don't want to do...I guess it isn't too dark..."

7:54 pm - Run, in place, at the bottom of the steps that lead to the reservoir.  It's dark.

7:55 pm - On the gravel.  Feet are happy, and the water looks so peaceful at night.  Try to remember how much you like water at night.

7:56 pm - Run your fastest mile ever because you are a bit scared.  Perhaps this is a good way to build up speed?

7:57 pm - Pass a couple, feel slightly more relaxed, couples are good, couples have cell phones, couples don't rape people

7:58 pm - Switch directions to stay in close proximity to the couple

7:59 pm - Look behind you.

8 pm - Slow way down at the curve, where it gets really dark.

8:01 pm - Turn around again.

8:02 pm - Look behind you.

8:03 pm - Try to force from your thoughts all the news stories you have read about women "foolish enough to go outside after dark alone."

8:04 pm - Look behind you

8:05 pm - See a man with a dog.  Wonder if the dog is a trick to get women to trust him.

8:06 pm - Look behind you.

8:07 pm - Decide that your heart is beating too quickly, slow down, and suddenly feel the hard, solid pressure of a desperate need to get the fuck off the dark gravel path and into the streetlights right that second.

8:08 pm - Look behind you.

8:09 pm - Pass a man running, headphones on, looking unafraid and oblivious.  Suppress your desire to clobber  him.

8:10 pm - Look behind you.

8:11 pm - Start to feel that weightless dizzy kind of scared.

8:12 pm - Run like hell back down to the street, heading to the streetlight like a moth.

8:13 pm - Look behind you.

______________________________

When I was in college I worked at a bar.  At 2:30 a.m., when I was done for the night, the quickest way home was to cut through the Boston Common.  Now, most ladies would take the longer way rather than risk it, but it made me mad that I had to walk a longer distance just because I was a girl.  So I stuffed my tips into my underwear, held my wine opener corkscrew-out in my fist, and marched.  I used to think that if they got to the money, they might be distracted for a split second, and I could gouge an eye out.  I actually planned this, just in case.  Only later did I realize both how stupid walking through the common was and how incredibly unfair it was that I had to picture gouging a human eyeball from its socket to make me feel safe enough to walk home.

I was reading an editorial in the New York Times this week in which Nicholas Kristof pointed out that the evidence in rape kits generally sits around, uninvestigated, for decades.  Rape, and the manner in which it is treated as compared to other violent crimes, isn't something I hear many men discussing.  It was refreshing to see it even mentioned in the paper, since it happens so often yet manages to stay out of the headlines.  What he didn't mention, and what no one ever seems to mention, is that even on the nights when nobody attacks us we still have to live with the threat of it.  It's like a living breathing thing, chasing us whenever we go out alone after dark.  And it fucking pisses me off.