I remember once getting pulled over for making an illegal
“U-Turn.” As the police officer wrote
out my ticket, I politely asked him “What should
I have done”? The police officer
replied, “Make a ‘Left’ into a driveway, back out carefully into the oncoming traffic
and then turn left.”
I responded that that sounded more dangerous than the
“U-Turn” I had actually made (which was safer because, when I made it, there
had been no oncoming traffic), to
which the police officer replied, “I do not disagree with that.” As he obligatorily handed me my ticket, I
completed our interaction by saying,
“It must be terrible having a job where you are not
permitted to think for yourself.”
The police officer had to give me the ticket because I had unquestionably
broken the law. Even though we both
agreed – or at least the police officer did not disagree – that my actual actions had in fact been the safer
alternative.
The police officer was straightjacketed by the Traffic Code
regulations from injecting his personal judgment into the proceedings (and not given me a ticket.) This, at least in that regard, made me believe that being a police officer was the
saddest job I could possibly imagine. Until
yesterday afternoon, when I ran into a young woman whose line of work, in my
view, was immeasurably sadder.
I have a bodywork person who offers their clients a five
percent discount if you pay them in cash. The Ten-Session Package costs one
thousand dollars, which makes my savings a not insubstantial fifty dollars per
payment. (Or, for my once-a-week sessions,
more than two hundred and fifty dollars per year.)
These cash payments are hardly a major inconvenience. I go to the local ATM machine, and I withdraw…
Well, that’s where it gets tricky. You see, my ATM will not allow me to withdraw more than seven hundred dollars
at one time. And I need nine hundred and fifty
dollars. What this means is that I have
either drive to another ATM for the
remaining two-fifty (sometimes that fools them and sometimes it doesn’t), or
come back to this one (or any other
one) on a subsequent day.
Now I am aware that, without my even asking, the “Spending
Limit” on my bank credit card, due to my long and reliable patronage, has been
regularly augmented. I imagined, not
unreasonably I believe, that an upwardly “bump” could similarly be made on my ATM “Withdrawal Limit.”
So I called my bank and I asked them bypassing the automated
service by pressing “Zero” for an actual person to talk to about it.
You know how when you call a business, you often hear a
recorded voice saying,
“This call may be recorded to help improve Customer Service”?
Well sometimes, I wish I
could record calls, so I could provide you with a stenographical
reproduction of the actual exchange.
Since I have neither that nor a photographic memory, the best I can do is
to recreate the overall impression.
Which is less than ideal, but as the previous sentence apologetically explains,
it is the best I can do.
A friendly young woman named…I no longer recall…welcomes me
to the bank’s “Customer Service” department and asks me a couple of
identification-verifying questions, to which I uncomplainingly respond. After enthusiastically acknowledging the
correctness of my responses, she cheerily asks,
“How can I help you today, Mr. Pomerantz?”
I explain to the young woman, as briefly and directly as I
can, that I want to have my ATM
“Withdrawal Limit” increased to a thousand dollars. (Rounding up from my required nine-fifty.)
“Of course, Mr. Pomerantz”, came her reply. Which I
in my ignorance believed meant, “Of course we can raise your ATM “Withdrawal Limit” to a thousand
dollars”, when it in fact meant a bizarrely
confirming, “Of course that’s what
you want, Mr. Pomerantz.”
Here is the parallel with the “police officer” situation,
only in this case it’s even worse. It
was not just that the “Customer Service” representative was unable to help me. This young woman was clearly instructed via,
I imagine, some rigorous “Orientation Program” that
“A ‘Customer Service’
representative must always be positive, even when – especially when – they are actually
being negative.”
What the young woman could
have said – saving us both a substantial amount of time, as well as her
reputation for forthrightness and integrity – was,
“Mr. Pomerantz, although we would sincerely like to assist
you, Bank of America policy permits a
maximum ATM “Withdrawal Limit” of
seven hundred dollars.”
And that would have been that. I would have been disappointed, of course, perhaps
even angry. I could, if I wanted, have checked
to see if other banks had higher ATM
“Withdrawal Limits”, and if I felt it was worth it, I could have easily switched
banks. But whatever, our entire phone conversation
could have ended in thirty seconds. Instead
of what it was, which was in the area
of ten excruciating minutes.
The young woman must have known, or could have readily
determined, that she would be unable to comply with my request. But, being required by her employers to be
unequivocally positive, she was strictly prohibited from saying so. Imagine a fish dangling from a hook, jerking
around desperately, while consciously aware that the ultimate outcome to their
tortured struggling was inevitable. The
young woman’s evasive maneuvering was palpably agonizing. Although the “dead fish” in this situation
was me.
Obligated to act like she was trying to help me (while fully
knowing that she couldn’t), the “Customer Service” representative presented numerous
clarifying questions, the answers to which, she suggested, might lead to the
resolution I was looking for. She went
“taka-taka-taka” on her computer. She
occasionally paused for what appeared to be serious strategic consideration. She tried to explain to me in a way I could
not comprehend – as I invariably
cannot comprehend things that do not make any sense – that the seven hundred
dollar “Withdrawal Limit” was actually for
my own protection.
Most egregiously, on three separate occasions, the young
woman happily informed me that she could indeed
raise my ATM “Withdrawal Limit” to a
thousand dollars, but only, she explained, “temporarily” (for fourteen days),
an offer I had rejected the two previous times that she had proposed it.
That’s right. She
proposed a temporary “Withdrawal Limit” supplementation once, and after I replied,
“That will not help me with this situation”, without acknowledging doing so, she
made the same unhelpful proposal two
additional times!
My heart went out to this woman. I could detect an element of discomfort in
her voice, suggesting that either she wanted to help me, or at least inform me
that she couldn’t. I was undeniably
upset not to get what I was asking for, but at the same time, I wanted to hug
that woman, and encourage her to find a job where her capacity for
self-expression was less punishingly restricted.
Writing for television, I was often infuriated at being
prevented – by the studio or the networks – from saying what I wanted to say in a sitcom script. But at no time was I ever instructed to say
exactly the opposite.
“I want to help you, but they won’t let me tell you I
can’t.”
That was all I wanted to hear. But if her employers found out she had said,
the young woman would most certainly have been fired. And they would definitely have found out…
Because they were recording our conversation to improve Customer
Service.
2 comments:
As painful as this conversation sounds, I don't believe it compares to the pain incurred with a call to your cable company.
Their representatives are obligated to give you special (though temporary and confusing) discounts in an effort to keep you from changing any feature on your service. That's in addition to the constant attempts to upsell you on even more services, even if you want to cancel your service.
It's obvious that these poor people are reading from a script as their response isn't always directly related to your comment/question. Sites like Consumerist.com have even stated that these people can be fired for deviating from their script.
It must be a particular type of hell to be a cable company customer servcice rep.
Since I used to work for a police department it WAS in the officer's discretion to either: give you a verbal warning, write you out a written warning or ticket you. He apparently chose the last option. The only reason he may not have been able to do the former options is he was a new hire that was on probation, his dept has ticket quotas [which is illegal and every police department in America will deny they require a quota....wink, wink] or he was just being a major dick that got his jollies writing out tickets just because he could [and I've worked with a number of those cowards that hide behind their badge that way and they would do everyone else in the business a huge favor if they would find another job.]
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