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One of the things that annoy me greatly is being told what to do. “Being hassled by The Man” as Peter Fonda said in ‘The Wild Angels’.



However, when you're in a job, it's difficult to avoid being told what to do by your superiors. Unless of course you work for an organisation where no-one really makes any decision whatsoever. In which case the word 'organisation' is very much symbolic rather than an accurate reflection into how they work. And indeed, for how long left they would have in any marketplace. This is why stoner hippies aren't generally CEO material. "Like, couldn't we just, I dunno.. make some money, man?" Good idea, see how that plan goes.

But it is not The Man that is the cause of such consternation today. It is that other demon, The Customer.

Now, we're all aware that my attitude to customer service was very closely modeled on Dylan Moran's approach to it. I sat down with a customer that said they needed some assistance with their account. Which, let's face it, can mean a number of things.

"I'm looking to set up this standing order." ah yes, a simple administrative procedure. And she slides over a sheet of paper from the council on it. Naturally, she hadn't bothered to fill any of the details out. I hate customers that naturally assume that i'm going to fill out theirpaperwork. That's why the council send it to them.. for themto complete it. I look at the form and ask for her account details. Then I notice that it's a weekly standing order that she wants set up.

"Ah" I say, "we can't actually set up weekly standing orders."

"But the council said I could." she replies pulling a considerable eyebrow frown that would rival Sam The Eagle.


Alistair Darling regretted eating all those blueberries

"Yes, it’s not to say that it’s not possible from other places, but we don’t do weekly standing orders.” I tell her into order to explain the rationale behind the council’s claims. “The minimum we do is monthly.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I ponder my next tact. Keep it nice and simple. “Yes. Yes I am quite, quite sure about this.” Excellent. A double yes and a double reinforcement of the word quite. That should show exactly how sure I am with that.

“Do you want to double-check with someone?”

No madam. I do not have to double-check with someone. For I have worked here for six years, eleven months and twenty-two days. I do not need to check this out. This is the thought that was in my brain. However, it seems that my brain took a decision to relay this sentence to the customer verbally.

“So I can’t do it then? My other accounts elsewhere can do it.”

SO WHY DON’T YOU FUCKING TAKE IT THERE THEN AND STOP HASSLING ME ABOUT THIS?!!?

“Well… unfortunately, we cannot do it here.” I figure this is a better thing to say. ”You can either set up a monthly standing order, or you can do the transfer manually.. yourself.. every. single. week.” I raise my finger (not that one) to illustrate my next point “or you can set up with your other place, where they can apparently do it weekly.”

“Why don’t you do it here?” she says shaking her head in a level just short of an epileptic seizure.

“I don’t know. It could be a policy decision, but the minimum we do-”

“Oh so you don’t know?” She says in a patronising yet satisfied tone. “Could you find out why not?”

What is this woman? I have the urge to look at her account and see if her job title is fact-fucking-finder.

“No. Look, we can’t do it.” I have no need to look anything up at all, I know I’m right. “Nothing is going to change that fact, the minimum.. is.. monthly.”

She seems to finally accept this and puts her paper away.

Then, suddenly, “I want to cancel a standing order.”

Alright, that is simple enough. I ask her which one and she tells me and I duly cancel it from the system by pressing a couple of buttons.

“Can I get confirmation of that?”

“Well… it actually takes 24 hours to update on our system, so it won’t actually show as cancelled until tomorrow. But it is cancelled.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Wait, what? She just fucking watched me press the buttons! What possible benefit would I have of not cancelling it for her?!

“Oh. Well… as I said, it takes 24 hours to update, so there’s not going to be anything showing on the system as cancelled yet. So… umm… yeah.” I drop the plan of saying ‘well tough shit’ at the end of that.

“So… nothing then?”

I repeat that point for the third time, showing her quite clearly on the screen the little button that says ‘cancel’ that I pressed. There is a long pause and we appear to be inadvertently in a staring contest.



But as Tom Petty sang, ‘I won’t back down.’

Then the silence is broken by the eyebrow cousin of Susan Boyle saying “I want to set up a direct debit.” Oh for FUCKS sake. As if we haven’t had enough banking facility disasters. And so she pulls out another form and slides it right in front of me using the whole of her palm.

Again, it is incomplete.

I look at the form, knowing full well what she can do with it. “We don’t actually set these up here. You need to send it to your company.” And I slide the form back towards here, and I point at the section at the VERY TOP of the form that states IN VERY BOLD LETTERING that the form is to be returned to them.

“You’re not very helpful, are you?” I toy with the idea of telling her a similar retort except replacing a word with her level of intelligence. Or lack thereof. “I mean, your answers are all one-words.” If this doesn’t show that she didn’t listen to what I said, I don’t know what does.

“Well I’m sorry about that, but there’s no point in offering you any sort of grey area. It’s either a yes or it’s a no… and I have given you factual information.”

“What’s your name, I think I’ll be writing in a complaint letter about you.”

“Would you like me to tell you it in one word or two?” I could think of an appropriate two-word phrase to tell her right now. The second being a verb.

So off she went on her merry way and I went upstairs to do a bit of training. Which meant lie on the couch and pretend to read a stupid workbook that has to be finished by the end of the month. I open it at a page;

Module two: Understanding your customer.

I closed the book, knowing full well that understanding customers requires a lack of logic, reasoning and brain cells. Perhaps eyebrow-size is relative to cranial capacity.

~Stripes

PS – This was a picture I took from the workbook.



If you write on the page, it is no longer blank, correct?