Eccentric Flower:200003/Shooters and Service

I'm feeling better now. I made a lot of progress on the code yesterday. I got home about nine p.m. and took a nice bath, washed my hair, shaved the things that needed to be shaved (which was just about everything), and in general just allowed myself to not do anything constructive for the remainder of the night.

Of course, it's back to the salt mines today, so as usual I don't have time to read journals and such, but I read Beth's weblog every morning, busy or not, and here are two things it inspired today:

First off, read this all the way through. Beth didn't do it justice, possibly because she is not a fan of these types of games and therefore didn't get all the jokes. (Here's a test: If you saw the episode and said, "Oh, they're making fun of Thresh" when the "Daryl Musashi" character appeared, you will get these jokes. If not, read it anyway - it's still funny.)

The irony - as I wrote in an email to the author of the review - is that William Gibson's other X-Files episode, "Kill Switch," is better written, more intelligent, contains more plausible pseudoscience, et cetera. Yes, it's still got a certain cyber-cheesiness about it, but it's a much better episode. "First Person Shooter" was a big disappointment.

So sometime between his first episode and his second one, Gibson completely lost faith in the viewers' intelligence. Or the show's producers did.

I will say something good about The X-Files, just for balance: The Cops crossover episode was much, much better than anyone had a right to expect. It was actually suspenseful and creepy. Go figure. (P.S. I cannot abide Cops.)

Beth also linked to the Customers Suck pages. I wasted a little time sifting through these pages, and I have to tell you: I don't want to come off as totally humorless, but these pages make me mad. And sad.

Okay. There are lots of legitimate complaints against customers - like when they're unhygenic, rude, or just plain stupid. But the following categories of complaints should be retired permanently as invalid and unfair:

1. The customer is grousing about retail conditions to the clerk - high prices, unavailable items, et cetera. Memo to clerk: Live with it. You are the front line and part of your job is to listen to the gripes. They're only griping because the retail-shopping experience in this country is so frustrating - and that's not your fault, and most of them know that.

2. You're pissed because the customer doesn't assume you're competent. I bear in mind a comment from a waitress who hated hearing "Please bring out my salad first," since her attitude was that any well-trained waitresses would know to do that automatically. Well, dear, congratulations, but there aren't that many well-trained waitresses. The standard of service has been slipping inexorably in this country for forty years (I'll get to that). You can't blame people for being overcautious, since competent service is no longer a given.

3. The customer says inane things to you. No, not stupid things, just the babble of someone who is trying to make conversation, like talking about how cold it is outside or something. (One comment on the site: "Do they think we never leave the mall?") Making conversation with a stranger is always hard, and making conversation with someone whom you're only going to have five minutes' interaction with is even harder. Would you prefer they glared at you silently?

4. All complaints involving excessive customer fussiness about matters of money. I'm talking about the woman who asks you to compute the senior citizens' discount in advance for four separate items, or the person who insists that they get every penny of their change back properly. With what you're probably being underpaid, you should be more sympathetic to poverty. That little blue-haired lady is trying to get the bottom line on which lamp she can afford with the last of her monthly subsistence check. If she walks out of the store without buying any of them, it means she can't afford any of them. We are conditioned in this country to never admit, "No, I can't afford that." We just leave.

5. All complaints involving tipping. This one will get me in trouble with people who were nodding their heads in agreement up to now, but too bad. I despise the fact that tips have essentially become salary for some classes of employment. That's your poor luck for being in that type of profession, because I will not tip for poor service. Period. And no one deserves your bile for not tipping, or for not tipping enough.

My standards are quite lenient - I tip fifteen percent in restaurants when the person has been cheery and made a good-faith attempt to please (even if the food was slow, et cetera, most of which isn't her fault anyway). I tip twenty percent or more when the service was really on the ball. The only thing that keeps me from giving a tip is when I get the feeling that the person really doesn't want to wait on me at all. Of course you don't want to - I understand that - but I expect you to conceal it and do your job well.

Of course, I also understand you're not really being rewarded for knocking yourself out. Not even with a big tip. I get really upset when I read the tales of revenge and frustration on this site, because it's only going to get worse, and letting civility decline isn't going to help.

Here's the deal: The problem isn't that customers suck. The problem is that service jobs suck. And aside from us hackers, the service industry is one of the few parts of the job market which will continue to boom into the foreseeable future. If you think a lot of us are working McJobs now, wait twenty years.

I understand that the pay is low, the labor sometimes backbreaking, the rewards nil, the bosses duplicitous, and so forth. Been there, done that. But firing back at the customers doesn't help the situation one bit. What you want to rebel against is the working conditions.

You are expected - and this will not change - to be bright and cheery and competent at all times. That is very hard work, no question. I feel that you should at least be amply rewarded for it. Many of these horrible "rules" - which are unfortunately quite real - boil down to "do something we're not paying you enough for." That has to change, I agree. And I understand why you're frustrated now.

But don't take your frustrations out on the people across the countertop.