“Michelle?”
Michelle turns quickly toward the voice calling her name, dispatches a quick smile and suddenly gets to business as she hastens her gait toward my station. I greet her personably.
“How are you doing today?”.
“Yes, my phone is broken. The screen finally cracked today. But before that happened, I want you to know that it has been dropping calls and it barely worked all that well to begin with. In fact, this phone is defective. It never worked. Plus, my bills are over a hundred dollars every month and I feel like I’m paying for service that I don’t even get. You guys are terrible on the phone. Have you ever tried talking to customer service? Ughh. But nevermind, I need you to replace my phone. Oh, and I never got my $100 dollar rebate from two years ago.”
Who me? Oh, I'm fine, thanks for asking.
Who me? Oh, I'm fine, thanks for asking.
Michelle uses the Gatling gun approach at getting her problems solved. She is hoping that, by accumulation of concerns, one of them will be addressed positively. She is also making sure that I know that her dropping the phone (sorry, the screen cracking...itself?) should be dismissed in light of the numerous problems she has already endured. All she really wants to hear at first is one sentence before she can breathe.
“I can help you, Michelle.”
There is an amusing phenomenon that occurs just outside a cell phone store every day. Before tugging on the handle and walking through the large glass door, the customer breathes in...breathes out...reaches...and enters. The inhale serves to acknowledge that things will probably not go well. The exhale is an attempt to accept that fate. Once inside, a reaction to the customer’s entrance is returned. The sales rep looks up at the customer, sees an already displeased face....breathes in....breathes out...here we go again.
Do not confuse the chronology of this event with the placing of blame, it's really chicken-or-egg type stuff here. And the parties are not fighting each other; they are fighting the faceless entities of "policy" and "procedure." But they don't know this and, prepared for the worst, they steel themselves against each other. I call it mutual pre-dissatisfaction. This level of it occurs in only a few places. In fact, I can only think of two other places outside the cell phone store: the Department of Motor Vehicles and the airline industry.
Example: In the Summer of 2010, Flight Attendant Steven Slater was arrested for cursing out an airplane full of passengers, grabbing some beer and exiting the aircraft down the inflatable emergency slide. The escalation went something like this:
1) Lady passenger doesn't sit down.
2) Steven insists she does.
3) Lady passenger grabs bag from overhead. Plane still moving. Bag hits Steven.
4) Steven insists she sit down and leave the bag.
5) Lady passenger calls him a name.
6) Steven flips out, tells all passengers to "go fuck yourselves!", grabs two Blue Moons, deploys the escape chute and successfully fulfills the dream of every young boy who has ever set eyes on those illustrated safety pamphlets.
People are dicks on planes. There’s only so much the dick-handlers can take before they reach capacity and have to throw something back. Each party has, over time, come to expect the worst in the other. In fact, these two were both acting on the history of the feud between passenger and flight attendant just as any dutiful Hatfield would treat a McCoy or Montague a Capulet. Now cell phone stores have joined the limited ranks of places were mutual pre-dissatisfaction occurs. I work at a place where everyone comes in and thinks, I’m ready to have the worst time of my life, let me sign in and get this over with.
