The Rant & Rage: Service this!

We all do it. It’s a necessity of life after all, a necessary evil. We all have to shop at some point or another, which doesn’t have to be so bad in the end, if not for the bastards relentlessly accosting me at every turn: customer service representatives.

Just get this straight—I don’t want to buy your extra crap, and I don’t want to sign up for your special in-store program. I came here for a reason and you are in my way. This is a simple exchange and not too difficult to understand—be there if I, or any customer, needs you, and otherwise shut the hell up and let us get our business done.

And I know for the most part it isn’t the individual’s fault—they wouldn’t be such a pest if they didn’t have to be. Some jackass in a cubical, miles away from where the business actually happens, figured that they could increase profits if their customer-service employees were less like helpful aides and more like assholes. So a mass of employees are degraded at their workplace, converted into annoyingly pushy up-sell bullies—and they must smile through it too. All the while, the cubicle douche bag kicks his feet up and gets a bonus.

It’s probably that same cubicle tyrant who thinks to himself, “You know, I bet people would feel more at-ease and would buy more if they felt the same superiority I feel over those meager peons walking the store floor. Hmmm. Ah ha! I could make them dress up like buffoons!”

I never feel superior to a customer service representative when they are dressed in horrendously colored shirts or goofball attire. Actually, I just feel sad for them. But then again, many people respond to sadness by purchasing crap, so touché marketing bastards.

You know someone has too much time to waste when they come up with this crap. And it just saddens me that they are raking in a salary for it while the folks who actually work are scraping by on a low-paying hourly wage.

Seriously, who do you think deserves more pay for what they do? The guy standing on their feet for eight or more hours, running though monotonous operations, suffering the screams and complaints of the public and actually doing the work that brings in the bucks, or the guy who sits on his ass all day, pushes some paper around and contemplates whether moving gumballs to a lower display will make children scream and cry so much that their parents will give in and buy them some, making the company an extra 25 cents? And that jackass gets benefits, too.

In the past, business provided solutions to customers’ needs. It was a symbiotic relationship with the customers. We needed stuff, and businesses had the answer. That’s not really the way it works anymore.

Instead, some jackass under the thumb of the distant cubical marketing dictators shoves crap relentlessly down our throats, when all we want to do is pay and leave. “Is that everything for you? Okay, would you like to sign up for our store card and earn a discount on our merchandise? No? Okay. Would you then like to donate to this heart-breaking charity by purchasing more crap from our store? No? Okay. How about some useless knick-knacks or candy…? Please, PLEASE—they’ll fire me if I don’t get my numbers up!”

Or perhaps I’m walking through the aisles and sooner or later someone says, “How are you doing today, you finding everything okay, can I talk to you about something you have no interest in and never came in here for in the hope you will pad the bottom line that I as the face of customer service don’t reap any benefit from?”

I say no more! I call on all cashiers, all customer service representatives and all other corporate peons to rise up! Stand against your up-sell-pushing, pseudo-marketing, paid-too-much-for-doing-oh-so-little overlords living in their cubical-lined office palaces. Refuse to up-sell. Refuse to push target products. If you do it in unison, there is nothing they can do!

And if you do rise up, you may see a brighter day in your positions. You can relieve yourself of the dirty feeling that you have prostituted your dignity to up-sell for someone else’s benefit. At least in the end I won’t have to put up with you, and you won’t have to put up with me. ?