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I hereby ban 'Benefit of the Doubt'

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  • I hereby ban 'Benefit of the Doubt'

    This is my decree, to be put into effect as soon as I take over the world, or it is taken over by a sympathetic power willing to put me in a position of authority.

    'Benefit of the Doubt' makes sense in criminal law, where the consequences are dire, and convicting an innocent man will irrevocably change a life no matter what restitution is provided afterwards. You cannot un-execute a man wrongfully committed of murder, you cannot give someone twenty years of their life back, you cannot heal the rift in a family caused by the belief that your brother sexually assaulted your daughter, even if he was in fact innocent.

    Denying someone a premium parking stall does not a life altering event make.

    I'm going to give you two versions of this conversation. The one that consists of the actual words, and the one that is the raw, pure context, and you will see what I mean. I feel stupider for having been part of this conversation, even more so that my job gave me little choice in the matter.

    Pol: Me
    M: Staff member with parking entitlement issues.
    D: Trainee who I must unfortunately throw to the wolves who park here as my sacrificial replacement.

    I was walking back from my break. D had been training with me, and was covering the booth on my lunch. M was standing in front of the booth, and turned to me with the 'Oh good, someone who knows what they're doing/will give me what I want' look.

    M: (Cheerfully) Hey there chief! I was just discussing with your associate here about me parking in the Visitor parking. I went all the way up to the 10th floor and couldn't find anything, so I'm just going to park here, okay?

    Pol: Errr... no, I'm sorry, but we have a lot of visitors scheduled here for today, and we just don't have room for you in here. If there's no room in the A section, you can park in the B section today...

    (A section is staff parking, level 1-7, B section is student parking, level 8-14. the parkade does in fact have an elevator.)

    M: (Not cheerful anymore) Look, I pay for my parking every month, and I couldn't find a space in my assigned area! I went all the way up to level 10...

    Pol: (Having heard this spiel before from many a staff member) The parkade has 14 levels. I'm sure there is space on level 13 or 14 (There should have been about 60 stalls there). If not, you can come back here, because we've got a serious issue, and...

    M: What's your name?

    Pol: Polenicus

    M: Fine. Give me a ticket so I can take it to the parking office. (With that, he turned and stormed out of the parkade)

    In fact, I DID try and call in a bylaw request (Staff requesting that someone in their spot be ticketed), since he technically did request we ticket him, and I had D as a witness. However, my supervisor decided against that (Damnit!). And he did write a page-long complaint e-mail in the time that the Parking Office manager was at lunch (About 20 mins). I explained the situation to her, of course, and from her tone before I explained it all, he seemed to have put a slightly different spin on things.

    Now, here's the context-only version.

    M: I wanna park here!

    Pol: No, you can't

    M: Yes I can.

    Pol: No, you can't.

    M: Yes I can!

    Pol: No, you CAN'T.

    M: Yes I can yes I can YES I CAN! You're not the boss of me! I'm going to do what I want and then I'M TELLING!!

    Now, how does Benefit of the Doubt fit into this?

    My position, although security, is related to customer service. I deal with customers, I take money, and I end up with people throwing tantrums. Now, for whatever reason the customer service industry has decided that in all cases, the customer shall be given the benefit of the doubt.

    This means, that this assmonkey will go to the Parking Office, complain to them, his program head and whoever else, and likely get platitudes and a pat on the hand. He likely won't get anything out of it, and I seriously doubt policy will change, but I may get a talking to. I may not, but there's this line we seem to walk at my site.

    Benefit of the Doubt now means you can do something wrong, and simply by insisting you did NOT do anything wrong, and that you are entitled to it, NO MATTER HOW OBVIOUSLY WRONG YOU ARE, you will get sympathy and likely some form of acknowledgement as a victim.

    People are being entitled jerks and acting like 6 year olds behind more sophisticated language because Benefit of the Doubt rewards them. Even if they don't get their way, Benefit of the Doubt says they deserve some compensation. It assumes that the customer service person they were dealing with was lying at LEAST as much as the customer was, and assigns them a portion of the fault regardless as to the actual situation.

    It's called the Grey Fallacy, and it's the mistaken belief that, when you have two sides of any story, each side has equal parts truth and fiction to it, and the real situation is somewhere in-between. This is bullshit. Not everyone tells truth and lies in the same ratio in every situation, and the Grey Fallacy does nothing but give liars backing when they should have none. Then Benefit of the Doubt swoops in and rewards them. This cycle repeats, until people can convince themselves they are entitled to almost ANYTHING, and Benefit of the Doubt will at least partially reinforce this belief.

    So M gets his parking spot, he gets his validation, possibly even an apology for parking being in such terrible shape. I get my authority trampled on, my attempts to retain enough parking for SCHEDULED visitors thwarted, and proven to be the lackey M believes me to be.

    Bah. I'll just shut up now, I think.
    Check out my webcomic!

  • #2
    Just a reminder that we don't condone revenge or vandalism of property.

    We've had to remove a post that headed in that direction.
    Too tired of living and too tired to end it. What a conundrum.

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    • #3
      Quoth Ree View Post
      Just a reminder that we don't condone revenge or vandalism of property.

      We've had to remove a post that headed in that direction.
      Agreed. While I would have LOVED to fulfill this person's request that we ticket his vehicle, in no way would I condone or even allow vehicles in my parkade to be damaged. My job as security is to protect the property and beings of the people at the college, no matter what kind of assclowns they're being. i simply disagree that bad customers should be validated for being bad customers, especially when you wouldn't (Or at least SHOULDN'T!) validate a child for acting in that way.
      Check out my webcomic!

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