Today at work I began to ponder again about the difference in customer relations between food service work and computer support work. People can be pretty stupid, I can too, we all have our off days. But you would think that when dealing in computer support there would be more frustration. Hell no.
I have come to realize that it is more difficult to help a person face-to-face in making their own food than it is over-the-phone in troubleshooting a computer problem. I am about eight percent sure that I had an easier time at ResNet trying to tell the most computer illiterate person how to access their network settings over the phone. I wish I could tape some conversations at Subway. How hard is it for people to read and use common sense? I understand it can be kind of confusing the first few weeks after Subway no longer has all sandwiches as $5 Footlongs. But hell, there has only been two times Subway did that. Is it that difficult to read and understand what sandwiches are $5 Footlongs?
I have ran into students who plugged a phone cord into their Ethernet port, plugged their Ethernet cord into the phone jack; misread signs about where to plug their Ethernet cord in. I dealt with foreign exchange students who lugged around bulky IBM Thinkpads. Granted, there were a lot of occasions when there were some customer flare ups. But now I am almost certain that I’d gladly replace those interactions with the mind numbing idiocy I ram heads with ever day at Subway.
Thanks for posting about this, I would love to read more about this topic.