Lara Zielin

The other day, I offered my help to someone. The interaction occurred at the front of my office, near the main desk and elevators. I think because of my proximity to where our receptionist normally sits, the person assumed I was the receptionist. That’s fine by me, except that their attitude was condescending and rude. However, the moment I clarified that I was a magazine editor and was just trying to direct them to the right resource (and, hello, be nice), the person’s demeanor changed. Suddenly, they were sweet as pie.

Ick, right?

But the thing is, it happened to me again not long thereafter. I was at a local drycleaner picking up my wares when the drycleaning lady working behind the counter asked if I was familiar with Ann Arbor. I said I was, and she held out the phone to me. A customer was on the other end, asking for directions to the joint and would I please assist. Simple, right?

Wrong. This person was so rude. I won’t even go into the myriad problems that were suddenly my fault (everything from prices to turnaround to the type of transportation they were going to have to take to get to the drycleaner). But when I explained that, actually, I was just a customer trying to help out because the drycleaning lady behind the counter wasn’t from around here, the customer gave a surprised little “Oh!” and, bam, they were suddenly respectful as could be.

I have to say, that’s the biggest form of lame ever.

Being nice to the CEO but mean to the janitor still makes you mean.
Being sweet to your aunt but pissy to your waitress still makes you pissy.

Here are three people we should be nice to all the time.

• Customer service reps (anyone on the other end of the phone helping you — no matter if they’re in Dubai or Iowa)
• Food service peeps (anyone and everyone from the lowly busboy to the manager)
• Airline flight attendants (do what they say, smile, and be cool)

Yes, there is a time and place for good customer service and if something is wrong, you’re right to want it fixed. But you can also tell a lot about a person by how they treat the lowliest among them. Just saying.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 9th, 2010 at 8:41 pm and is filed under looks like life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.