Rage against the customer service worker

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2021

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As if they don't have enough to worry about, restaurant, retail, and airline employees are still facing customer meltdowns over COVID-19 precautions. We ask a 'customer whisperer' if these explosive customers can be defused.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:03.4	Stacey Vanick Smith.
0:13.1	Adrian Ma.
0:14.1	What do you serve as sales clerks and flight attendants have in common?
0:18.0	This is a rhetorical question.
0:19.6	This is true.
0:21.8	I don't know what.
0:22.9	Tell me.
0:23.9	They are all jobs that day in and day out require interacting with strangers.
0:27.5	Yeah, and not even just interacting, right, but serving them, making them feel welcome,
0:32.5	like that's their job.
0:33.5	Yeah, and in the last few months, we've talked a lot about the rise of the remote worker
0:37.5	and the changing workplace.
0:39.5	But for the people who work in customer service, their workplace has changed too.
0:43.9	No more mass.
0:44.9	No more.
0:45.9	You know what the funny thing is?
0:47.1	So this was a, should we say, like a dissatisfied Costco customer?
0:51.9	That's, yeah, gently putting it.
0:54.3	Yeah, and he was upset about Costco's policy of requiring customers to wear masks.
1:00.0	Every day it seems a new video of a customer flipping out goes viral.
1:05.0	And yeah, a lot of that is over COVID protocols and masks, but there's also a worker shortage.
	...

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