Manifesto

We work for corporations whose idea of customer service is to build a karmic dam where the customer who throws a tantrum like a three-year-old is rewarded for it.  Where the customer has paid for the right to treat the company's employees like shit.

What does that do to the employees?  They must be either false, or they must be perfectly spiritually evolved in order to turn the other cheek and reward the demanding demeaning behavior with a free upgrade at a hotel, fines waived at a library, empty products returned for cash at a health food store.

On the other hand, the people who yell and throw a fit and act like not having their every whim catered to is a gross injustice - they are raging against the corporate machine and may genuinely feel that they must debase themselves and the employees they speak to in order to get their due.  The bottom line of a company - make x amount of money at a profit - that's a tricky thing to find.  The easiest way to make a profit is to gyp people.  People are sick of getting gypped, sick of working themselves to the bone to go home and deal with, for instance, Verizon, a mega-company that cares not a whit about the absurd bureaucratic hoops people sometimes have to jump through in order to give Verzion the money they earned at a job they despise.

Oh, the whole system's screwed.  I am not one to get free upgrades, generally, and I wonder if it is because I empathize too strongly with the employee who's telling me no, these are the rules, no, this is what you paid for, no.  I try to pay attention to the people who manage to get more for their money, more than they've paid for, without screaming and yelling and splashing in the karmic dam of the corporation, but so far I haven't been able to deduce their method.  Maybe a calm still feeling of deserving it.

Sometimes I feel like my friends who work in customer service, bowing to the will of tantrumey customers, have had their personalities deformed just as truly as a factory worker gets his hand mangled in a machine.  To grit your teeth and smile, and give, to someone who rightfully deserves to be told to stop behaving like a spoiled brat.  It wears on you after ten, twenty years.  Especially if you're trying to care about your job, invest some meaning in it even though it's menial.  If you choose the false front over spiritual evolution the false front can meld itself to your real self without you realizing it. 

I leave you with an anecdote.  Once my friend who worked the graveyard shift at a diner told me that her friend spit in a terrible tyrant's side of ranch, and my friend helped by stirring in the spit bubbles with her finger.  Think about that if you're ever tempted to snap your fingers at a server like they're scullery maids on the Titanic.  If what I've said about the spiritual disfigurement of not standing up for what's right is not enough to dissuade you from throwing a tantrum in a business establishment: consider some 20-year-old tweaker's spit in your side of ranch.  Mmmm.