Comment by catapart
9 hours ago
exactly this. I didn't put you in a bad job; you - and to a large extent, your society - did. you are the face of the machine that I am trying to deal with. if you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machine. but if you pick up a phone to talk to a client or customer, you are a representation of an organization, and you will be treated as such. fix you mind to understand that people are trying to find the right things to say to you to get what they need at that moment. no different from someone putting in quarters to get a soda from a vending machine. I do X, I get Y. if there is a breakdown in getting Y, I will try other things beyond X. so, in this example, I tried to be reasonable; I tried to make this simple for me while simultaneously making it simple for both you and the machine you are representing. if it is the machine that prevents you from accepting that simplicity, then explain as much as they let you, apologize like a human being for the failings of the machine you represent, and ignore literally all of the rest of it. you can only do what you can do. they can only get what they can get. no amount of hostility will change the policy, but hostility will surely get different (sometimes better; not often) results than acquiescence. recognize that it's not hostility towards you and - god forbid - enjoy the fact that someone else notices how fucking shitty the machine you work for is. if you're a real superstar, take note of the specific situation and place it somewhere you can provide a collection of specific situations for review.
> if you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machine
How dare someone take a job that isn’t very nice just to afford a living!
That said, everyone kind of sucks in the situation.
The Karen should have been nicer and shown more compassion instead of hitting the OP with that line about security (and maybe the whole approach should have been considered a bit more, since their requirements make it harder for disabled people to receive the support they need).
And OP perhaps maybe should have filed a complaint or something, maybe contact a news org if they’re feeling wronged, instead of being petty like that. What if someone else doesn’t receive their services in a timely manner over that bullshit? It felt more like feeling triumphant over inconveniencing someone and getting back at them in a sense.
I can’t say I don’t find that sort of thing relatable, but yeah it probably could have been handled better by everyone. I guess what I’m saying is that they shouldn’t have been subjected to the circumstance that lead to them being a jerk, but the choice to be one is on them.
How dare!
I'll assume you're misrepresenting me out of genuine misunderstanding, rather than snark, so to that end: I'm not suggesting no one every take a job they don't like (for any reason whatsoever!). I'm suggesting that everyone recognize the position they are in and make peace with it. You're in a job that isn't very nice? Got it! Been there. Feel for you. Honestly!
But why, on earth, would that afford you pity when you take part in making life shitty for other people? You knew that was the job. You called the job 'not nice'. Recognize that you are being shitty to someone. Yes, on behalf of a company. That part goes both ways. You aren't responsible for the shitty things you're doing - that's the machine's responsibility. You are just doing shitty things. You don't get absolved from that just because you didn't make the call. It's still perfectly rational to resent the person that is being shitty to you.
And, overall, it seems like we mostly agree. Not a lot of people "in the right", in this story. I won't discount that it's the caller's prerogative to be a jerk (even if it's just being a jerk "back"), and that's on them. Just want to stake the claim that while I accept that, the standard must reciprocate to the actual agent on the phone as well.
It's not intended to be a misrepresentation, as much as it is to use exaggeration to call attention to how suggestions like
> "You are the face of the machine that I am trying to deal with. If you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machine."
might be barking up the wrong tree somewhat.
Often people will be in any given job because they can't easily get anything else and they just have to make ends meet, and especially in the present circumstance (affordability crisis in a lot of places), I couldn't blame them for being the face of some such machine. Saying that they should quit on principle feels insulting to me, when they often have little to no sway and are treated as disposable cogs in said machine.
That's why I wouldn't be upset at (or at least wouldn't take it out on) the people enforcing various asinine and straight up bad policies - since that's like blaming a line worker for the price increases of the product they just sell. I think the original post actually gets a lot of that nuance right - societal impact, the human aspect and so on. I don't wholly disagree with it, just that element. Of course, they shouldn't give you attitude either, but there's probably ways to handle that that aren't disruptive to the business continuity and others receiving their services. Ergo my suggestion that everyone in that situation could have handled it better.
> You are a representation of an organization, and you will be treated as such.
It's too easy to take this as a justification that leads to workers being treated like shit for the decisions of their bosses or even someone higher up in an org chart they haven't even met.
> No amount of hostility will change the policy, but hostility will surely get different (sometimes better; not often) results than acquiescence. Recognize that it's not hostility towards you and - god forbid - enjoy the fact that someone else notices how fucking shitty the machine you work for is.
This is okay when it's harmless banter and some camaraderie. This isn't good when you're just sitting there in a call centre with someone who's deeply frustrated and is cursing you out or is looking for an argument - you might even agree with their frustrations, but that doesn't mean that you yourself deserve that. One of my friends worked in one for a few years and there definitely are some stories that made me feel sorry for them.
I'm probably reading into it too much. Maybe just ask to talk to her manager directly, on the account that they might at least pass it up the chain. At the very least, I do think that it would have been better to send the super long fax mentioned in the post to the person who made that policy, with a note saying "Since security is of utmost importance, I entrust that you will handle the attached documents appropriately!" blow up their fax machine (or their assistant's, for that matter) not the Karen that's just doing her job.
Of course, there are limits to this - blatantly illegal or inhumane practices should still sway you towards quitting ASAP, but a Karen might not know the first thing about what InfoSec policies are good or not. Or she might genuinely enjoy making people jump through hoops - I don't have enough context here to say anything for certain, but that in general, there should be basic human decency and respect going both ways.
Spoken from the pretty obvious position of never having to have worked a low-wage people facing job.
Here's the real situation: the people that pick up the phone when you call them up aren't going to be paid much above minimum wage at all. They have zero institutional power to fix anything. You're yelling at people that, themselves, almost certainly are only barely making enough money to get by either.
It is worthless to yell at these people because they can't fix shit; they don't set policies, they have no power to fix things and all your yelling is going to achieve is at best counterproductive to what you want to get done (since now the front facing employee dislikes you personally and is less inclined to try and help you out) and at worst is going to get you into further trouble when you do need something routine done. (Since now you're on the list of "people that the employees don't want to put any extra effort into since they're jerks".)
There are people that get paid to be the complaints facing entity of the organization, who are paid to withstand whatever shit you can throw at them and who have an ability to fix up whatever you needed in specific. They're not the people that pick up the phone.
What you need to do is channel the inner Karen and ask to speak to the manager. The manager can help you with this sort of thing, they are the ones that can do shit to avoid sustaining the machine, because they have a career they want to grow into and risk actual consequences for pissing people off.
Be polite (but firm; you don't need to be walked over) to the first tier support employees, even if they can't help you. Save the complaints for the manager (who you shouldn't be afraid to ask to speak to either). The managers job is to deal with the real complaints, not the routine stuff that just happens to need a human involved. They are taking a job to be the face of the machine for reasons other than "I literally need a minimum wage job to survive".
Being paid a low wage doesn't give you a right to mistreat people because of you conditions. There are no justified resentments
The employee didn't mistreat anyone. She simply stated the procedure (which sucks!).
It was OOP that chose to escalate this to malicious compliance and ascribed a lot more to her attitude than what's actually said. OOP assumed that she was out to get him in specific, when nothing in the described call even suggests as much.
The correct response would've been to ask for the manager and if the manager chooses to stonewall in an obnoxious way (which is possible!), then you pull the frustrating fax from hell on them. At that point, you're not just speaking to someone who has no power to fix shit, you're talking to someone who does have the power to fix shit and chooses to be a stick in the mud about it. That's when being a jerk back is deserved.
Being a jerk to low paid employees in this manner is unacceptable, rude and makes me think a lot less of the person writing it.
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I'd say that is likewise for treating your customer as a nuisance instead of taking the time to explain the circumstance.
lol. stopped reading after your first line because I've worked every low-wage, customer facing job you can imagine. shoe salesman, phone rep for verizon and then t mobile and then at&t, fast food, local diner waitstaff, office receptionist, contract installer, HVAC repair, cable service tech. that's a truncated list. I have the opinions I have because I've had those jobs, not in spite of them. I know how I carried myself, and it was a very low bar to reach. it's only when people don't reach that bar that I raise issue. because the bar is "know where you are, know what you can do, know what you can't do, and be as accommodating and responsive to the client/customer as you possibly can be, given your constraints." doesn't feel onerous to me. and in this specific case, I don't even have a problem with karen, per se. at least not from the content of the story. my reply was in response to other people insisting that karen needs to be coddled because all she did was answer a phone and this horrible man sent her a fax! (the horror)
The human faces of the machine are our only hope. The alternative is, in the short term, a machine face of the machine, whom you can't argue with and who will summarily deny your benefits with no chance of appeal. In the long term, the alternative is no machine at all.
The purpose of this machine is, ultimately, to give people government benefits. The people who hate that the government gives out benefits at all, when in power, do everything they can to make the machine more hostile and less functional. They then take anecdotes like these as evidence that the machine should be smaller and do less.
Karen is not your enemy, the policy makers who want to give Karen less agency (and who make rules like "you can't accept emails") are your enemies. They want you to hate Karen and Karen to hate you. Ultimately they want to fire Karen and reduce government disbursements to zero. They are reading this thread with glee.
See, e.g., the case studies in https://virginia-eubanks.com/automating-inequality/.
See, here's the thing. All the planning and whatnot for the human facing part of the org was done years in advance, and nobody factors/designs in bottom-up change from the consumers of the process. If you aren't willing to comply, you are written off as not the target demographic. Physical production/bureaucracy/software development, it's all the same shit. Just different labels, and by the time the process bumps into you, it's already ossified. Literally the only way to change things is targeting actual executives. They are the only ones with the authority to change things, and they do everything possible to hide themselves/insulate themselves from having to do it. Even then though, it may be for naught. Governmental bureaucrats are often limited by statute/politics/resources. The lack of care we experience on a day to day basis is the system working as designed. Should it be designed that way? Probably not. But until we can figure out a better way to do things, or we stop all being asshats to one another, this is what we have to work with.