Fucking Customer Service

This is what I'd like to know: what ever happened to the motto "the customer is always right?" The other day we dropped an obscene amount of money at Williams-Sonoma on an aluminum scoop, a canister and a six-pack of dish towels, and when it came time to print out the receipt, the aging cashier accidentally jammed the cash register and had to alert one of her stern-looking, tight-lipped co-workers. Instead of just voiding the items and re-entering them, which would have taken all of two minutes, on the advice of her co-worker she decided to try to fish the crinkled receipt out of the cash register, piece it together, have Avery sign it, then go make a copy for us. As the minutes ticked by, we decided she must have gotten in her car and driven clear down to Kinko's to make said copy.

Meanwhile, another "I'm so glad to be making minimum wage here at Williams-Sonoma, I could just spit" salesperson wandered over to ask if we'd been helped, to which Avery exasperatedly replied that yes, we've been helped and yes, we're still waiting for a copy of the receipt. At that point, the whole lot of green-aproned Williams-Sonomites turned and bared their teeth at us, tsking and making comments like "It takes time" and "You have to have some patience." At exactly what point did we turn into the bad guys?

I've told tales of my experiences with customer service people in the past, especially the ones manning any one of the multitudes of the planet's 1-800 lines, but it's gone way beyond that. I mean, I did my four-month stint as a headset-wearing drone, taking call after call at a plain grey desk furnished with a chair and a computer monitor and that's it, and it made me feel so homicidal that I couldn't stand it anymore (you may note that I only spent four months in the position&#41, especially after answering the same stupid question in a faux-cheery voice 42 times in a row from 42 different people, so I kind of feel these people's pain. The only good thing about that job was that just about everyone I worked with hated their jobs as much as I did, so we would make frequent use of both the mute button and the seven words you can't say on TV and vent about whoever we were talking to, and then have a good laugh about it as we bonded over our shared feelings of how when we saw a little old lady on the BART train platform we all felt like pushing her in front of it. (I'm sorry, but old people are the meanest and most condescending, even when their threats contain outdated language like "I'm going to send a complaint letter to your boss through the post!" Old men in particular like to puff up their chests when they hear a woman's voice on the line and insist on making comments like "No, but I bet YOU do" (when asked if they have their account number handy&#41 or "Are you so-and-so's secretary?" to which I reply "I'm his assistant, yes." to which they reply "So you are his secretary, then. Anyway, blah blah blah found a one cent discrepancy on my statement blah blah insignificant problem blah blah."&#41

Apparently, now everyone hates their job, not just customer service slaves. I frequently need to call the Home Office of the company I work for to get the answers to my questions, and I am met with the most remarkably deplorable phone manners I have ever witnessed. Last week I called one department where the person who answered the phone was evidently speaking in tongues. I literally could not understand a word she said and hung up in fear. This very afternoon I was explaining my question to a woman who, after answering the phone like I had just woken her up from an afternoon nap, proceeded to yawn loudly into my ear while I was in mid sentence! I was so shocked I just stopped talking. Where do they find these people?

The world may never know, thank god.