I'm convinced after doing it for a year that phone-based customer service is one of the most stressful and degrading jobs on the planet. Day after day, customer after customer, all I deal with is idiots and jerks, most of whom have caused their own problems (not paying your bill is the #1 cause of having problems with my particular company).
Furthermore, the phone reps don't make the rules. The phone reps are not the ones who sat in a boardroom and agreed to hand over call records to NSA. The phone reps don't have any say in what the policies are at all...we just get fired if we don't follow them. When you call Verizon or AT&T to get information about this situation, keep in mind that the rep on the other end did NOT make you sit through the automated menu to get to a rep...that's a management decision. The phone rep did NOT have anything to do with Verizon's decision to hand over call records. The phone rep does NOT have any control over whether their job gets outsourced to an Indian or a Panamanian or an El Salvadoran who works for peanuts (furthermore, I'll tell you a secret: phone reps in the US work for peanuts, too.)
Furthermore, I'm continually baffled by this obsession with getting a phone rep's name and ID number (or in my case my extension number, 60198 thank you very much) when you call. I've got news for you: unless I swore at you on the phone or deliberately misled you, calling and asking for my supervisor and then swearing at them because I told you something isn't going to get you anywhere. 99.999% of the time, what I told you is correct, and asking for a supervisor isn't going to get you anywhere. They're going to tell you exactly what I've just told you, and they're not going to be nice about it.
The bottom line is this: phone reps are people too. We work hard for little money, we can be fired at any time for any reason (don't even get me started on the insanity of at-will employment...another subject for another day), and most of all, we don't make the rules. And yes, if you scream at us, we will cry.
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