All-American Assholes and the Truth About Supposed `Poor Customer Service’.
by Rewired
03/04/02
I just got done reading a newspaper article describing a recent study that seems to show that we’re becoming bigger assholes here in the Land of the Meek. According to the survey results, high-volume morons on cell phones are on the rise, and sightings of reckless, aggressive drivers have never been higher. Our attitude toward minorities is improving, through it damn well could be that we’ve simply became (as a strange, lurpy kid said a long time ago in high school), “equal opportunity hate mongers.” It could be that we’ve taken our infantile prejudice against minorities and have refocused it on the entirely of the human race.
All over the country, The People seemed to feel the same way: America is overpopulated by assholes. The only significant difference of opinion between them was the issue of people using foul language - like shit, fuck, cockrocket and bitchmonkey. Of course, the study also revealed that this difference stemmed from what the two places considered foul language. Like I give a shit. Who the fuck swears anymore? It’s so damn cliché.
Of the 2,013 all-American assholes surveyed by the research group Public Agenda in their initial telephone survey this January, 79% said there is a major issue concerning respect and courtesy (but, you know, fuck them), and 61% held the belief that it’s gotten worse the last few years. All this goes on as we’re in the flag fad and stickers and billboards still read `United We Stand’ loud and clear? Oh my, their appears to be somewhat of a contradiction here - could it be that CNN was wrong? That the after-affects of September 11th tragedy, when we all came together, held hands, loved one another and had one all-American patriotic group orgy of hearts and minds - that all that was merely temporary? That our potential for species suicide is not lessening, but growing?
United we Stand in Our Selfish, Greedy, Rude, Vulgar Behavior - now, how’s that for a bumper sticker, fuckers?
More than anything, however, I laughed considerably at the statistics regarding poor customer service, and the fact that half of those surveyed walked out of a store in the past year due to it. I’m guessing these are the same brand of assholes that come into the places I’ve worked, and if so the asinine attitude may actually lie in the customer and his or her impossible demands, pissy attitude, and obsessive sue-happiness.
For instance, for a short period of time before I exited my previous fast food job, I was thrown into a leadership position which, due to my voiced reluctance toward my own authority, I assumed on only rare occasions spanning a few hours in the gaps between the shifts of REAL managers. It was then that I began experiencing a strange phenomenon. No matter what day of the week or time of the day I was forced onto the throne of our Food Service Asylum, people would inevitably smell this from miles away and come rushing to buy massive quantities of artery-clogging consumables to further intensify the retched state of my horrid life. We got hoards of bitchy, stupid customers. The most memorable is the Rat-Poop Guy.
This was an old guy that came to the counter with a Whopper and wearing that fabricated exaggeration of anger on his face. This look of complete displeasure is, of course, meant to elicit a fear in the manager on duty that would cause him to do anything to satisfy this displeased customer.
Why would we want to please a picky asshole? The reason is obvious: if we didn’t please this picky asshole, this picky asshole would call the corporate office (which happens often in these jobs, believe me). The corporate office, in turn, would do just what we refused to do: they would do anything and everything in their power to please him.
There is a bonus here, though: not only does the guy get what he wants, but he probably gets more from corporate just so the guy wouldn’t sue. More importantly, however, he would get the manager who was on duty when this picky asshole bought whatever it is that he bought into what is known in the food service industry as “really fucking deep donkey pooh.” Not only is the manager likely to get fired, but every bottom-of-the-barrel member in the company suffers, for these corporations are known for making new regulations based on a single complaint from one insipid customer who was obviously pissed off enough and motivated enough (or bored enough or picky enough) to look up the goddamned corporate number and bitch to them. The authenticity of the complaint doesn’t matter - only the motivation of the customer to call them, clearly indicating that they might have enough motivation to go further and sue.
Which brings us back to rat poop guy.
A coworker was already speaking with him, so I tried to put on my empathic look and approach him in a confident and concerned manner. I then asked him kindly just what was the matter, paying careful attention to my tone of voice and being sure to end my sentences in “sir” for added effect. I was doing quite well, too, until he held up his sandwich and said in a very, I’m faking being pissed, but I’m also faking concealing it poorly kind of way: “I don’t want this sandwich, it’s got rat poop on it. I just want my money back.”
I froze. I stood there, waiting for the punch line. I looked dead at him, and that’s when I realized that this stupid, old, hairy man was serious.
“Rat… ?
“Poop,” he finished. “Rat poop.”
I slowly held out my hand, and he placed it in my open palm. “All right,” I said, “please sir, if you could, please point out the general location of this… rodent feces.”
“It’s… it’s on the bottom,” he said, shrugging nervously, and then quickly jumping into the next sentence. “I just want my money back,” he said again, “that’s all. No fuss, no problem, I just don’t want to eat it.”
I quickly looked at the bottom of the bun. There were seeds - dark seeds that for some reason often bake into the bottom of the bun. Definitely seeds. Clearly seeds. Not rat poop.
“But the customers always right,” my internalized managerial superego program stated.
“No,” I told the subjective voice, “this customer is a stupid shithead.”
“Okay sir, no problem,” I said to him immediately. “If you’ll wait just a second we’ll get you your money back.”
“I mean, can’t you just give me my money?” He said, trying to seem like he wasn’t trying to express annoyance. “I just want my money back.”
“You can have it back in just a moment, sir,” I politely informed the annoying asshole, “the drive-though person has the key to the register, and I haven’t been trained to do this yet so she’ll have to do this for me. It will be just a moment..”
“Can’t I just have my money back?” He said. “Why do you need the key to the register? Can’t you just open it and give me money?”
“If you had a gun, yes,” I thought to him. “As a matter of fact, I’d probably give you all the money. But your easily identifiable, would be picked up by the authorities in no time, and I’d still have to have the chick in drive-thru open the goddamned register, so keep your mother fucking shorts on.”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” I said.
“Just open the register, right there, it’s not that hard,” he said, pointing to it.
“Oh!” I thought. “That’s the register. How kind of you, Mister Rat-Poop Guy, to introduce me to your friend, Mister Register. You’re a nice guy after all, Mister Rat Poop Guy. Let me introduce you to two of my friends - this here’s Mister Door, and this here’s Mister Foot. And here’s Mister Finger.”
“It is hard when I can get fired for not doing it appropriately and putting it into the computer,” I said, “which I can’t do until I get the key that the girl in drive through has, which I need to open the register anyway, and which she needs right now. So if you’ll be patient for just a second, we’ll get you your -“
“Look, I just want my god damned money back.”
My teeth clenched. My fists tightened. My eyes grew in size. I was shaking. I wanted to rip out his esophagus and take a belt sander to his face. This was all pre-planned. He didn’t wait long enough in-between repeating himself, and it was to evident in his tone of voice and body language that he was looking to raise a ruckus, get half a sandwich free and his money back in full. Maybe vent some anger out on a convenient target for psychological displacement - your neighborhood burger flippers.
“One second, all right?”
“I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK, AND I WANT IT NOW. I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY, I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK-”
I smiled at him - broadly. “Just a minute, sir.” Fuel the fire.
“THERE’S RAT POOP ON MY SANDWHICH!”
“They’re seeds that got baked into the bun, not rat poop. What are you, a specialist on feces or something? You study poop for a living? What exactly is it that they call you fucking morons? Pooptologists? Did you rush those dark seeds on the bottom of your bun to the lab before bringing it back here, just to ensure that it was rat poop? Do you know what kind of rat? We’ve been worried about our rats - can you tell me, do they get enough fiber?”
Okay, I didn’t say that.
“I’m a CUSTOMER, dammit, and I’m ALWAYS RIGHT! IT’S YOUR FUCKING JOB TO PLEASE ME, SO PLEASE ME, BITCH!” Okay, so he didn’t really say that.
“Sir,” I began calmly, “if you’d like to call corporate, we can get you their number. Or you can look it up in the phone book right there in the lobby. My name’s Tim, I’m the manager on duty, tell them to fire me. But before you do, sir, there’s something I should tell you, because you deserve to know the truth. It’s your right as a consumer. It’s your right as an all-American asshole. In honest truth, sir, it was I who pooped on your sandwich. It’s just really embarrassing, you know, having such a small asshole. I feel especially inferior standing next to an asshole as big as you. If I might say so, you must squeeze quite a loaf, sir.”
Okay, I didn’t say any of that, either. Why do I always think of the best stuff after the incident? He just got real pissed after the girl from drive-thru handed him his money and rushed out the door, screaming: “Service sucks here.”
(As a side-note to nincompoops of the like: if service sucks, you insipid fuck heads, why not go home and open a can of Ravioli rather than ingest greasy, artery-clogging soy patties that an inane corporation is trying to pass off as beef?)
So the allegations of “poor customer service” may actually have a lot more to do with customers than they were willing to admit in that survey. I can’t say I’d blame anyone who told off a customer like that, for I certainly wanted to. Contrary to popular belief, the customer is usually not only wrong, but an incompetent shithead - your average, all-American asshole. Don’t get yourself down about it, though. I mean, this is the best country in the world, right?
Whatever.
by Rewired
03/04/02
I just got done reading a newspaper article describing a recent study that seems to show that we’re becoming bigger assholes here in the Land of the Meek. According to the survey results, high-volume morons on cell phones are on the rise, and sightings of reckless, aggressive drivers have never been higher. Our attitude toward minorities is improving, through it damn well could be that we’ve simply became (as a strange, lurpy kid said a long time ago in high school), “equal opportunity hate mongers.” It could be that we’ve taken our infantile prejudice against minorities and have refocused it on the entirely of the human race.
All over the country, The People seemed to feel the same way: America is overpopulated by assholes. The only significant difference of opinion between them was the issue of people using foul language - like shit, fuck, cockrocket and bitchmonkey. Of course, the study also revealed that this difference stemmed from what the two places considered foul language. Like I give a shit. Who the fuck swears anymore? It’s so damn cliché.
Of the 2,013 all-American assholes surveyed by the research group Public Agenda in their initial telephone survey this January, 79% said there is a major issue concerning respect and courtesy (but, you know, fuck them), and 61% held the belief that it’s gotten worse the last few years. All this goes on as we’re in the flag fad and stickers and billboards still read `United We Stand’ loud and clear? Oh my, their appears to be somewhat of a contradiction here - could it be that CNN was wrong? That the after-affects of September 11th tragedy, when we all came together, held hands, loved one another and had one all-American patriotic group orgy of hearts and minds - that all that was merely temporary? That our potential for species suicide is not lessening, but growing?
United we Stand in Our Selfish, Greedy, Rude, Vulgar Behavior - now, how’s that for a bumper sticker, fuckers?
More than anything, however, I laughed considerably at the statistics regarding poor customer service, and the fact that half of those surveyed walked out of a store in the past year due to it. I’m guessing these are the same brand of assholes that come into the places I’ve worked, and if so the asinine attitude may actually lie in the customer and his or her impossible demands, pissy attitude, and obsessive sue-happiness.
For instance, for a short period of time before I exited my previous fast food job, I was thrown into a leadership position which, due to my voiced reluctance toward my own authority, I assumed on only rare occasions spanning a few hours in the gaps between the shifts of REAL managers. It was then that I began experiencing a strange phenomenon. No matter what day of the week or time of the day I was forced onto the throne of our Food Service Asylum, people would inevitably smell this from miles away and come rushing to buy massive quantities of artery-clogging consumables to further intensify the retched state of my horrid life. We got hoards of bitchy, stupid customers. The most memorable is the Rat-Poop Guy.
This was an old guy that came to the counter with a Whopper and wearing that fabricated exaggeration of anger on his face. This look of complete displeasure is, of course, meant to elicit a fear in the manager on duty that would cause him to do anything to satisfy this displeased customer.
Why would we want to please a picky asshole? The reason is obvious: if we didn’t please this picky asshole, this picky asshole would call the corporate office (which happens often in these jobs, believe me). The corporate office, in turn, would do just what we refused to do: they would do anything and everything in their power to please him.
There is a bonus here, though: not only does the guy get what he wants, but he probably gets more from corporate just so the guy wouldn’t sue. More importantly, however, he would get the manager who was on duty when this picky asshole bought whatever it is that he bought into what is known in the food service industry as “really fucking deep donkey pooh.” Not only is the manager likely to get fired, but every bottom-of-the-barrel member in the company suffers, for these corporations are known for making new regulations based on a single complaint from one insipid customer who was obviously pissed off enough and motivated enough (or bored enough or picky enough) to look up the goddamned corporate number and bitch to them. The authenticity of the complaint doesn’t matter - only the motivation of the customer to call them, clearly indicating that they might have enough motivation to go further and sue.
Which brings us back to rat poop guy.
A coworker was already speaking with him, so I tried to put on my empathic look and approach him in a confident and concerned manner. I then asked him kindly just what was the matter, paying careful attention to my tone of voice and being sure to end my sentences in “sir” for added effect. I was doing quite well, too, until he held up his sandwich and said in a very, I’m faking being pissed, but I’m also faking concealing it poorly kind of way: “I don’t want this sandwich, it’s got rat poop on it. I just want my money back.”
I froze. I stood there, waiting for the punch line. I looked dead at him, and that’s when I realized that this stupid, old, hairy man was serious.
“Rat… ?
“Poop,” he finished. “Rat poop.”
I slowly held out my hand, and he placed it in my open palm. “All right,” I said, “please sir, if you could, please point out the general location of this… rodent feces.”
“It’s… it’s on the bottom,” he said, shrugging nervously, and then quickly jumping into the next sentence. “I just want my money back,” he said again, “that’s all. No fuss, no problem, I just don’t want to eat it.”
I quickly looked at the bottom of the bun. There were seeds - dark seeds that for some reason often bake into the bottom of the bun. Definitely seeds. Clearly seeds. Not rat poop.
“But the customers always right,” my internalized managerial superego program stated.
“No,” I told the subjective voice, “this customer is a stupid shithead.”
“Okay sir, no problem,” I said to him immediately. “If you’ll wait just a second we’ll get you your money back.”
“I mean, can’t you just give me my money?” He said, trying to seem like he wasn’t trying to express annoyance. “I just want my money back.”
“You can have it back in just a moment, sir,” I politely informed the annoying asshole, “the drive-though person has the key to the register, and I haven’t been trained to do this yet so she’ll have to do this for me. It will be just a moment..”
“Can’t I just have my money back?” He said. “Why do you need the key to the register? Can’t you just open it and give me money?”
“If you had a gun, yes,” I thought to him. “As a matter of fact, I’d probably give you all the money. But your easily identifiable, would be picked up by the authorities in no time, and I’d still have to have the chick in drive-thru open the goddamned register, so keep your mother fucking shorts on.”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” I said.
“Just open the register, right there, it’s not that hard,” he said, pointing to it.
“Oh!” I thought. “That’s the register. How kind of you, Mister Rat-Poop Guy, to introduce me to your friend, Mister Register. You’re a nice guy after all, Mister Rat Poop Guy. Let me introduce you to two of my friends - this here’s Mister Door, and this here’s Mister Foot. And here’s Mister Finger.”
“It is hard when I can get fired for not doing it appropriately and putting it into the computer,” I said, “which I can’t do until I get the key that the girl in drive through has, which I need to open the register anyway, and which she needs right now. So if you’ll be patient for just a second, we’ll get you your -“
“Look, I just want my god damned money back.”
My teeth clenched. My fists tightened. My eyes grew in size. I was shaking. I wanted to rip out his esophagus and take a belt sander to his face. This was all pre-planned. He didn’t wait long enough in-between repeating himself, and it was to evident in his tone of voice and body language that he was looking to raise a ruckus, get half a sandwich free and his money back in full. Maybe vent some anger out on a convenient target for psychological displacement - your neighborhood burger flippers.
“One second, all right?”
“I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK, AND I WANT IT NOW. I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY, I JUST WANT MY MONEY BACK-”
I smiled at him - broadly. “Just a minute, sir.” Fuel the fire.
“THERE’S RAT POOP ON MY SANDWHICH!”
“They’re seeds that got baked into the bun, not rat poop. What are you, a specialist on feces or something? You study poop for a living? What exactly is it that they call you fucking morons? Pooptologists? Did you rush those dark seeds on the bottom of your bun to the lab before bringing it back here, just to ensure that it was rat poop? Do you know what kind of rat? We’ve been worried about our rats - can you tell me, do they get enough fiber?”
Okay, I didn’t say that.
“I’m a CUSTOMER, dammit, and I’m ALWAYS RIGHT! IT’S YOUR FUCKING JOB TO PLEASE ME, SO PLEASE ME, BITCH!” Okay, so he didn’t really say that.
“Sir,” I began calmly, “if you’d like to call corporate, we can get you their number. Or you can look it up in the phone book right there in the lobby. My name’s Tim, I’m the manager on duty, tell them to fire me. But before you do, sir, there’s something I should tell you, because you deserve to know the truth. It’s your right as a consumer. It’s your right as an all-American asshole. In honest truth, sir, it was I who pooped on your sandwich. It’s just really embarrassing, you know, having such a small asshole. I feel especially inferior standing next to an asshole as big as you. If I might say so, you must squeeze quite a loaf, sir.”
Okay, I didn’t say any of that, either. Why do I always think of the best stuff after the incident? He just got real pissed after the girl from drive-thru handed him his money and rushed out the door, screaming: “Service sucks here.”
(As a side-note to nincompoops of the like: if service sucks, you insipid fuck heads, why not go home and open a can of Ravioli rather than ingest greasy, artery-clogging soy patties that an inane corporation is trying to pass off as beef?)
So the allegations of “poor customer service” may actually have a lot more to do with customers than they were willing to admit in that survey. I can’t say I’d blame anyone who told off a customer like that, for I certainly wanted to. Contrary to popular belief, the customer is usually not only wrong, but an incompetent shithead - your average, all-American asshole. Don’t get yourself down about it, though. I mean, this is the best country in the world, right?
Whatever.
