One of the things that I disliked a lot when I had my computer company was having to accept abuse from customers “even if he or she were wrong“.
The final straw came when a woman rang up complaining about the job done on her computer. She was highly stressed, very nasty, and very abusive.
I explained how we had installed her items free of charge, and she got her items at a discount, and how I had to order a couple of bags of screws because most of what was screwed together inside her computer was missing screws (for instance a hard drive had one screw holding it in place instead of the four required). It was a very rough job someone had done before I got to see the computer.
The problem was that the person who previously worked on the PC was a “friend” in university so the customer assumed that her “friend” had done no wrong and even though he was a student, to her he was a qualified expert.
So this customer (everything was working fine on the computer) decided that somehow I had not done a good job on her PC. She wanted a new power supply and a new cd drive. All were working fine after I installed them, she even told me that.
She screamed, ranted and raved how she wanted an older cd drive, and that a “friend” had told her that there were not enough screws inside the PC so she and he told me that I stole them.
I tried to explain nicely that I put in two small packets of screws in her PC “for free”. She said that I was lying.
This is why I dislike being in customer service, till work, repair work etc. I just don’t want to set myself up to be abused by people who ‘lose the plot’ some day.
Between that woman customer abusing me, my (ex)-wife going on Prozac from the stress of company life and her personal and her family (mother mostly) problems, I shut down the company and started writing software.
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I just couldn’t believe how much abuse a person had to take dealing with customers. I was genuinely horrified, disappointed and depressed.
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In the Countdown supermarket the other day a customer, myself and a check out woman were all discussing how customers can ruin a person’s day when the customer freaks out and losses the plot. These badly behaved customers are a result of a society that does not bring people up right. Sadly the rest of us are supposed to gracefully put up with people’s abuse if we work face to face with customers.
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One day at the Cinema, when I worked there, I created an amazing slide show website for the Cinema, and in front of all the other staff the manager verbally abused me nastily. It was so bad that I had to walk out of the Cinema and walk around town for a long time to cool down.
I didn’t ask to leave the job to cool down, I just walked out furious. I knew that I had done an amazing job, it was really good. And to make it worse she wanted it dirt cheap, but I had debts to pay. After I cooled down a lot, I went back. The staff stared at me embarrassed by the abuse I received. No one was surprised when I quit working there.
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I don’t mind helping people with their personal lives, motivation etc. But I very much dislike being in the firing line for people who are “having a bad day”.
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All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
Friday, 4 March 2016, 10:23:14 PM.