People who look down upon front line employees

[draggar]

A lot of us here are front line employees (directly dealing with the public / customers). Oddly, a lot of people tend to look down upon people in job like ours (and yes, I deal with my fair share on a regular basis.

If you ever feel down about this, just think of these facts.

1) YOU are the face of your company.
2) Your company made an investment (sometimes large) to be that face and still wants you to be that face.
3) Those condescending customers (clients, etc.) are coming to YOU for help.

If a customer is looking down at you and it makes you feel upset, the problem isn't you, it's them. They're unappreciative and self centered and probably have little to no real happiness in their life.

[Jay 2K Winger]

This is generally how I look at things--

They are blustery bullying blowhards that feel impotent in their own lives, so they take it out on someone they think can't fight back.

Myself, while they're carrying on, I'm in my head thinking "Tiiiiiiiiny penis!" (or something equally humiliating if the sucktomer in question is not male)

[Dreamstalker]

In my town, trying to be nice to some of the nasty SCs never works; it just wastes my time and pisses me off for awhile (they see my being polite as some sort of mental defect which in their mind justifies them being worse; there is absolutely NO winning with that).

On SCO, if you know how to ask for help and are nice about it (i.e. "Excuse me, [problem]") you get help with a smile and I may even offer recipe advice if I see you're making something interesting. There are a few customers who admit at the outset "I screwed up" and that's fine, here's what to do/not do next time (but I'll still always help you because I like you for knowing the fault is with the system/company, not me).

If you start things off by waving, yelling, barking orders and/or insulting my intelligence, you get the bare minimum unless something happens to prove otherwise. Once you start with the personal attacks, out you are rung and to the desk you go with whatever, I'm not getting into a pissing match.

Some of our customers are real pieces of work and cashiers are not allowed to outright refuse service, but I've taught some of the newbies how to either defuse things or tell the SC they're being an ass in a way that they can't complain without revealing that they started it/are scamming.