Are you good at dealing with bullshit? A job in customer service will show you if you’re good at handling ridiculous non-problems from the mouth-breathing masses.
Take a job as a sales representative for a credit card company, one where you’re stationed in a store and pitching lines of credit to random shoppers as they stroll into the building.
It’s much harder than you think. Working in a customer service role will show you what it’s like to deal with human beings who at their worst (in a civilized society), are selfish, impatient, and ignorant.
It takes a tremendous amount of patience to listen to a customer blather on about nonsense that you know is wrong, and more importantly, doesn’t make any sense.
You need incredible self-control to be kind to someone when they’re rude to you over something about which they’re wrong or don’t understand.
I think that must be the most challenging part, when you have to take someone’s bullshit when the customer is, undoubtedly and without question, wrong about the entire subject.
It will also show you that the average person’s listening skills are fucking terrible. People hear what they want to hear. You could spend 30 minutes explaining a concept why, for example, a customer can’t use his credit card and can only use debit or cash, and that same person will go up to the cashier and try to use their credit card.
The machine could be down, but that person doesn’t give a fuck. He/she will gladly cause a scene spanning 15 minutes of their time when they could quickly go over to an ATM and take out the money in 30 seconds.
If you don’t have patience, I don’t recommend you take a job in customer service. If you’re a person who’s extraordinarily conscientious and hardworking, a person who has a goal and will steamroll anybody who is in the way without question, then customer service is not for you.
Does this describe you? You have a task in your mind which you need to finish; it’s been bothering you all day, when you start working on it, it almost feels as if it’s a relief to be dealing with it finally.
However, right as you begin, your girlfriend or family member starts trying to get you do some other bullshit that you feel is entirely irrelevant.
If it’s in your nature to completely ignore that person who’s attempting to pull you away from your tasks at hand, then customer service is not for you. You need something which you can grind at without stopping, without any interruptions whatsoever.
It’s my opinion that the vast majority of men don’t like serving customers. Of course, many do, but I think men, typically, don’t have the patience to deal with difficult/retarded clients. But obviously, there are many exceptions to this rule.
In other words, there is a general tendency for men to have less patience in the customer service department, and whether that is due to culture or biology, I don’t know.
However, I know one guy, and he’s a master at talking down disheveled customers who have had one too many beers.
I watched him talk down this irate know-it-all one time who insisted that he bring a bottle of vodka into the club. It was truly phenomenal listening to this fucking guy go on for 15 minutes about how he has “worked in bars his entire life and knows that he’s allowed to bring booze in,” despite the fact that we said to him several times that it’s not permitted, and that’s final.
After about five seconds, I had already had enough of this guy. If you’re not willing to obey the rules of the establishment, then I don’t think you should be allowed in.
After moments like this, I realized that I don’t think I can own a nightclub or a bar, or maybe I just would have to hire a manager who would deal with bullshit.
I just don’t have the patience to deal with clients like this. I get incredibly annoyed after 15 seconds. In my mind, a rule is a rule, and that’s pretty much the end of it. I’m not going to argue with you for 15 minutes about something that is pre-determined and outside of my control.
The other night, I watched a guy stumble out of the bar with a beer in his hand, and the bouncer outside came and grabbed him, very nicely, and said: “you have to go back into the bar.”
This guy got all up-in-arms about it, as if the bouncer was entirely out of line and disrespectful when clearly, it was him who was wrong. It’s, undoubtedly, 100% illegal, to carry open alcohol outside of a bar in Canada, in every Province, and in every Canadian city (I’m 100% certain of Ontario and Quebec anyway, perhaps not out east or way up north).
Eventually, the bouncer grabbed the beer out of his hand and carried it back inside and said to the guy that he could drink it in the bar, and leave whenever he was ready to go. He threw up his hands in exasperation after the bouncer took his drink.
I recommend taking a job in customer service or serving if you want to find out what kind of person you are. It honestly isn’t for everyone. Some people just have a short fuse and a low tolerance for nonsense; it’s ok if that’s you.