Artificial Sympathy

[kevin_standlee]

Scott Adams writes about The Joy of Righteous Indignation. And having been trapped behind a table at conventions promoting various functions (Worldcons, Westercons, fan clubs, etc.) and thus having been a captive audience, I have had more than my share of this.

I am by my nature a problem solver. I want to find out what is wrong and fix it. When I find that the problem isn't fixable, it's very frustrating to me. When I end up dealing with someone who is quite literally impossible to please because even if I fixed his/her stated complaint, s/he would have another one stacked up right behind it, it's completely maddening.

Sometimes it doesn't happen quite that way. At ConJose I had someone come up to be all worked up and ready to roast me over the coals because his son had been charged $10 more for his membership than he'd expected to pay, based on something I'd said to him months ago. I thought about it for a moment, and instead of giving him a polite nothing-I-can-do message that would have led to him yelling at me, or for that matter putting him through a runaround with con registration to get his money back, I decided that the buck really did stop with me, or the ten bucks in this case. I took out my wallet and removed a $10 bill and handed it to him. "Are we all square now?" I asked?

He was dumbfounded, but agreed that we were. Fortunately for me, he was not one of the complain-for-entertainment types. But I did encounter them at ConJose and elsewhere.

If only all of my problems were as easy to solve as the Case of the Overpriced Child's Membership.

PS: I did recover that $10 eventually from ConJose. There's a mysterious-looking line-item in the Chairman's budget called "Appeasing the Unhappy" that our Treasurer added when I applied for the reimbursement along with my other at-con convention-related expenses. Nobody would likely notice it when looking at the CJ budget, except it's something like the third or fourth expense line in the entire document, so people's eyes haven't glazed over before reaching it.

Comments

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

I would have charged it to Chairman's Discretionary fund. Conzilla had a $500 fund of which about $2.35 got used.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I had one; the Treasurer found it more entertaining post-con to change the line-item description.

[smofbbs.livejournal.com]

Still, that sounds like $10 well spent, in the time you saved by resolving that customer's issue quickly.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I love it. I think there ought to be a whole department titled that.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I love it! kproche, I have No Problems with a line item like that.
We need it to be a bit smaller, like $100, but no problems.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Part of my job involves listening to a fair amount of this. Today I listened to a man who called to complain that teenagers are not polite on buses, that they do not give up seats to seniors, that they put their backpacks on the seats and look at him in disrespectful ways. None of these are things we can fix, for legal and practical reasons, but of course, I still get to listen sympathetically before getting him off the phone. I also listen to complaints about how when it rains, the rain blows into the bus shelters in Daly City, so that shelters should always be built facing away from the wind, and about how it's unfair that the bus system does not serve every street in San Mateo, because seniors don't just live on one or two streets, and it's mean to make the walk to bus stops more than 1 block away.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

I live in this wierd world everyday as a CUstomer Service Representative for a roller company. I also work at cons where I have to work with attendees and Dealers. You could call me a Sadomasachist. I am not, but I do wonder whether I am at times.