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Many times I encounter people who are being real [liquid feminine hygiene product] bags to clerks. I usually chat with them and hand them the URL for Customers Suck in the hope of giving these people a place to vent before they hit critical mass and splatter half of the store and the people therein. I do this for the good karma and to ensure I'm not one of the innocents diced in the crossfire when Mr and/or Mrs Clerk snaps.
Anyway on one occasion I had passed the URL to a clerk and someone behind me said that she was a lurker on this forum and that she found it offensive that the clerks were taking offense to their suckyness since it was the fault of the clerks who have bad attitudes.
Well to you (and I'm hoping you read this Mrs. "MY attitude comes from the fact that I'm better than you and I can do no wrong") I'm here to give an example of how you are so wrong and that being firm but courteous gets you far FAR better treatment than you get by being an asshole to us.
Saturday I get a text notice that my Cingular no-contract phone account was unable to take the payment out of my bank account through my debit card. Puzzled I checked my account, saw that I had the $50 for this month's bill in there and thought nothing of it, figuring that if it continues to have problems I'll call on Monday since 1. the bank is closed until then and 2. They always make one attempt per day for 5 days meaning that Wednesday would be the last attempt.
No more text messages and I figure it went through the next time. Nope, on Thursday the account tanked. Bugger. There goes the $45 in rollover minutes I had accumulated.
Figuring that the rollover minutes were gone forever (as was the last time this happened) I go online to pay for another month. My account won't let me in. Hit the forgot password and waited. Then I discovered that it was texting the password to me. REAL big help since my phone is offline.
So I called up this morning to find out what the deuce happened. Called the number and I got the wrong department. I told them my story and was transferred to another department.
While on hold I remembered my password and paid my month so I could get the phone back on. Odd...my debit card is no longer on record with them. Even odder is they still had my old X-ville address and not my new Y-ville address. Even weirder is the fact that my debit card (and the bank account for that matter) was created under the new Y-ville address. To really confuse the matter they were using the new card on this account for 5 months without a problem. Very odd indeed. I fixed the contact information on the website and my payment went through.
Beep-Beep-Beep...Yup it's working...there are the two text messages telling my what my password is. [fornicating] technology.
Person finally answers the phone and I inform her that I no longer need help making a payment but that I wanted to know what happened to my account and why the card was declined. She couldn't help me on that matter but passed me to someone in technical service. Once again I repeat my story, adding the information that my address was changed for some strange reason. He checks the records and lo and behold, the card was declined because the bank refused it for invalid address submitted.
BING-fragging-o!
Now mind you at up to this point I've kept civil, polite, and even interjected a bit of levity into my voice to keep the people on the other end of the line at ease.
Anywho, he says that it is odd that the system set me back to my X-ville address and he has no idea how or why it did that. I pointed out that I had around $45 in rollover minutes that I've lost and I was disappointed that I had lost them. He said that he didn't have the authority to give me the minutes back but he'd pass me to someone who can.
Now Mrs "customers are angels and clerks are assholes" pay attention. While I was frustrated that I had to jump through the hoops, but this what happens when companies get so large that they have departments. One dept will handle task "A" and only task "A", another department will handle task "B" and so forth and so on. It sucks, but that's life.
Frustrated as I was I kept civil and polite and upbeat for the next step.
Tell the story again adding the fact that the tech found out that my card was declined since Cingular didn't have the correct address. Customer Service person looked up my records and asked me if I had ever had my phone expire and lose minutes before. I was truthful with the person. Trust me, it helps more than it hinders. I informed him that yes indeed I expired a phone once before and I had lost minutes before. I also told him that it was my fault since I didn't have the funds at the time...my bad. He looked again and told me the date it happened to confirm. He told me that I had to be put on hold while he tried to figure out how many minutes I really did have. 10 minutes of goddess awful muzak I get him back and he tells me that I had a balance of $40.54 instead of the $45 I told him. I said that the $45 was a guestimate and we thanked each other and we both ended the conversation on a happy note. I got my rollover minutes back (and even if he missed $5 I'm not going to complain since I can't really be sure if I was right or if he was) and he got to deal with a customer who was firm about what he wanted, kept it civil and polite, and was thankful for his good service.
So Mrs "Clerks are out to screw the consumers", living proof that being a douche bag is going to make us pissed off at you and being a nice guy will encourage us to actually help you. In this case they really didn't have to give me back my minutes since I should have checked it on Monday to make sure the payment went through, but since I was a good customer and didn't flip out when filing my complaint they went the extra mile.
Remember, we want to help people. If we do a good job then we might get promotions and raises. We want you to wax poetic about us to our bosses in the comment boxes. We want you to be happy since happy customers are a joy to work with. We don't cringe with fear when a happy customer shows up.
Remember that the next time you deal with the people on the other side of the counter. Your blood pressure would improve greatly if you are a decent human being instead of an anal-dwelling twat monkey.
Mongo Skruddgemire
Anyway on one occasion I had passed the URL to a clerk and someone behind me said that she was a lurker on this forum and that she found it offensive that the clerks were taking offense to their suckyness since it was the fault of the clerks who have bad attitudes.
Well to you (and I'm hoping you read this Mrs. "MY attitude comes from the fact that I'm better than you and I can do no wrong") I'm here to give an example of how you are so wrong and that being firm but courteous gets you far FAR better treatment than you get by being an asshole to us.
Saturday I get a text notice that my Cingular no-contract phone account was unable to take the payment out of my bank account through my debit card. Puzzled I checked my account, saw that I had the $50 for this month's bill in there and thought nothing of it, figuring that if it continues to have problems I'll call on Monday since 1. the bank is closed until then and 2. They always make one attempt per day for 5 days meaning that Wednesday would be the last attempt.
No more text messages and I figure it went through the next time. Nope, on Thursday the account tanked. Bugger. There goes the $45 in rollover minutes I had accumulated.
Figuring that the rollover minutes were gone forever (as was the last time this happened) I go online to pay for another month. My account won't let me in. Hit the forgot password and waited. Then I discovered that it was texting the password to me. REAL big help since my phone is offline.
So I called up this morning to find out what the deuce happened. Called the number and I got the wrong department. I told them my story and was transferred to another department.
While on hold I remembered my password and paid my month so I could get the phone back on. Odd...my debit card is no longer on record with them. Even odder is they still had my old X-ville address and not my new Y-ville address. Even weirder is the fact that my debit card (and the bank account for that matter) was created under the new Y-ville address. To really confuse the matter they were using the new card on this account for 5 months without a problem. Very odd indeed. I fixed the contact information on the website and my payment went through.
Beep-Beep-Beep...Yup it's working...there are the two text messages telling my what my password is. [fornicating] technology.
Person finally answers the phone and I inform her that I no longer need help making a payment but that I wanted to know what happened to my account and why the card was declined. She couldn't help me on that matter but passed me to someone in technical service. Once again I repeat my story, adding the information that my address was changed for some strange reason. He checks the records and lo and behold, the card was declined because the bank refused it for invalid address submitted.
BING-fragging-o!
Now mind you at up to this point I've kept civil, polite, and even interjected a bit of levity into my voice to keep the people on the other end of the line at ease.
Anywho, he says that it is odd that the system set me back to my X-ville address and he has no idea how or why it did that. I pointed out that I had around $45 in rollover minutes that I've lost and I was disappointed that I had lost them. He said that he didn't have the authority to give me the minutes back but he'd pass me to someone who can.
Now Mrs "customers are angels and clerks are assholes" pay attention. While I was frustrated that I had to jump through the hoops, but this what happens when companies get so large that they have departments. One dept will handle task "A" and only task "A", another department will handle task "B" and so forth and so on. It sucks, but that's life.
Frustrated as I was I kept civil and polite and upbeat for the next step.
Tell the story again adding the fact that the tech found out that my card was declined since Cingular didn't have the correct address. Customer Service person looked up my records and asked me if I had ever had my phone expire and lose minutes before. I was truthful with the person. Trust me, it helps more than it hinders. I informed him that yes indeed I expired a phone once before and I had lost minutes before. I also told him that it was my fault since I didn't have the funds at the time...my bad. He looked again and told me the date it happened to confirm. He told me that I had to be put on hold while he tried to figure out how many minutes I really did have. 10 minutes of goddess awful muzak I get him back and he tells me that I had a balance of $40.54 instead of the $45 I told him. I said that the $45 was a guestimate and we thanked each other and we both ended the conversation on a happy note. I got my rollover minutes back (and even if he missed $5 I'm not going to complain since I can't really be sure if I was right or if he was) and he got to deal with a customer who was firm about what he wanted, kept it civil and polite, and was thankful for his good service.
So Mrs "Clerks are out to screw the consumers", living proof that being a douche bag is going to make us pissed off at you and being a nice guy will encourage us to actually help you. In this case they really didn't have to give me back my minutes since I should have checked it on Monday to make sure the payment went through, but since I was a good customer and didn't flip out when filing my complaint they went the extra mile.
Remember, we want to help people. If we do a good job then we might get promotions and raises. We want you to wax poetic about us to our bosses in the comment boxes. We want you to be happy since happy customers are a joy to work with. We don't cringe with fear when a happy customer shows up.
Remember that the next time you deal with the people on the other side of the counter. Your blood pressure would improve greatly if you are a decent human being instead of an anal-dwelling twat monkey.
Mongo Skruddgemire
"You'd feel a Hell of a lot better if you'd just rip into the occasional customer." 
Don't they realize that venting here keeps us sane enough to deal with their suckitude at work? Oh, that's right, we are not human, we are drones programmed to kiss a$$ and smile when they act like whiny babies. I don't think so. 
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