"With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"

Am I paranoid to wonder whether AT&T's "customer-service" representative was punishing Stanley Fish for correcting her grammar? Or, more precisely, for ranting? 

He kind of asked for it. I mean, she was instructed to say "With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" He complained. No doubt she has also been instructed to say "I'm sorry you feel that way" in response to any complaint she can't resolve. So when that remark elicited another complaint from Fish, there wasn't much she could do to get him off the phone (and surely she has also been instructed to get callers off the phone ASAP) except to fob him off on someone else. So she invented a problem with his Social Security number and shipped him off to limbo.

Real human communication has been driven far underground in our dealings with corporate representatives. Paradoxically, corporate goals of courtesy and efficiency are what drove it there. Of course, the result is neither courteous nor efficient -- it's just mechanized. The only partial solution I know is to stay really, really nice, even when I'm really, really annoyed. Does anyone else have another strategy that's more satisfying?

Comments

I agree with you. Staying nice is the key. Sometimes I like to say something like, "I realize that this is not your fault, and I certainly don't mean to take out my frustration on you". It's really more for myself than for the person on the other end though. Saying it out loud reinforces it (however briefly) in my own head.

Posted by James | December 29, 2008 1:45 PM

ITA w/you. He screwed himself when he started the grammar lesson; that was just stupidity on stilts with neon lights flashing. I always bow and scrap to everyone in the service industry: be polite, when refused you must recognize their power and then plead, then continue (contrite) pleading to get your way.

It's passive-aggressive and annoying. But it works for me.

Posted by Rhoda | December 29, 2008 2:33 PM

Read the Fish rant. Sounds like he got the better of himself.

I love talking to customer service. It's like going to the gym to stay fit for when I have to deal with the NYS Workers Comp Department.

The number one thing to remember is how ever bad it is to be the customer AT&T or whatever, it's 10 times worse to be the employee. This simple fact means that you have a HUGE reservoir of sympathy you can tap whenever dealing with a customer service rep.

The "I realize that this is not your fault, and I certainly don't mean to take out my frustration on you" is excellent, especially (in my experience) when used ahead of whatever foul-mouthed rant I'm about to launch into.

For me satisfaction means getting what I want. To that end, i try to get people off script and connect my (little, one-off) frustration to their (big, daily) frustration. Most of the time it works.

Also, making people laugh out loud at the madness of it all is fun!

Posted by Tony Comstock | December 29, 2008 3:16 PM

Sympathy goes a long way.

In the theme of redundancy:

• "It pays to be nice to the nice (even if they are ignorant or are forced by their overbears* to act idiotically)."

• "Remember, those people are people too."

* neologism-as-noun: o·ver·bear (n): a supervisor of domineering and perhaps ursine disposition.

Posted by pannonica | December 30, 2008 12:50 PM

I charge Fish with abuse of power. He has been given the mighty power of a column in the New York Times. I feel he has picked a frivolous issue. Stanley Fish is using his mighty power to swat flies. I would compare Stanley Fish in this column to Andy Rooney but at least Andy is funny sometimes. I agree with the following comment:
Mr. Fish, I am petty and have no life either, but I have no life in only one residence. I also don't have a national-level blog that I use to complain about problems with utilities companies, so I make comments about my problems on such blogs. You poor man. I will shed some crocodile tears for you.
- Rob L, N Myrtle Beach SC

Posted by Tom Ryan | December 30, 2008 5:00 PM

I agree that Mr. Fish tempted, nay; invited the service rep to push back by correcting her grammar. Wrote a comment to the NYT expressing that, but they didn't post it. Probably shouldn't have spelled out that she was PO'd. Interesting to speculate whether he would have done the same thing if the grammatically peccant individual, having just alighted from his cruiser asked, as his red lights flashed, to see Dr. Fish's driver's license.

Posted by George Ingraham | January 2, 2009 12:38 PM

As a fan of Fish, who's enjoyed his writing for decades, I'm dumbfounded by his reaction to a polite greeting. Redundancies violate an intuitive rule of syntax not taught in school and are far from uncommon. They don't normally grate like grammar errors.

For him to be so lacking in empathy that he felt free to get angry at her canned reply to his pedantry, never thinking or caring her strict rules of engagement mandated her reply and prevented discussion, much less rebuttal, is one thing. For him to fail to consider, even upon reflection, that she had the power and motive to delete his order and send him through the "paddle line" is something else altogether. Could he be suffering from negative side effects of some medication?

Posted by Janice Huth Byer | January 2, 2009 12:41 PM

In the midst of what turned out to be a two week struggle to get our internet service restored, after having been asked the same technical question repeatedly by the technical support person, and having answered with as much precision as I, a lawyer and English degree-holder, could muster, I finally quipped, "Hey, I was an English major--you're the techie--you tell me." He laughed--and tried a different and ultimately more useful tack.

Posted by Kathryn | January 2, 2009 2:23 PM

Fish's behavior was arrogant, and stupid to boot. Why bother to vent with a poor low-level employee who has no power to do what Fish asked? That's wasteful, and rude. Fish should have resorted to a tried old method: write a letter to the CEO. Put it in writing, write a nice, polite letter and sign it with Professor and NY Times Columnist, and you're likely to get a polite answer. Perhaps even a thank you for pointing out the simple grammatical error. Instead, Fish behaved like a fool.

Posted by Carl The SailorMan | January 2, 2009 4:07 PM

I was using a public telephone many years ago (does anyone remember those things?) which lacked a telephone book as some vandal had ripped it out. The operator was astoundingly rude when I asked for information, telling me I could look it up for myself. After a pregnant pause, I apologized: "I'm sorry, operator, but I'm blind." This sort of tactic seems to work.

Posted by Dennis St. John | January 2, 2009 4:19 PM

For a two years as a college student I worked in the university's cafeteria. As I was one of the few employees capable of "coping with chaos" I often got assigned to tend the salad bar and/or beverage service (the latter required some upper body strength but both jobs required a fair amount of personal initiative). Both jobs meant a lot of contact with the diners, many of whom were decidedly unhappy. The students loved to vent there various issues with the caf to me: "Why isn't my favorite cereal available here when it is in my friend's dormitory?" etc. Of course I had no actual power to do anything but I was a guy wearing a white paper had, ID tag and yellow coat and I was available. Most of the time they were blowing off steam and figured they'd blow some on me.

When I'd given my two weeks' notice to take another job, I got rather free with my tongue. When asked about such existential questions such as "Why can't I get chocolate ice cream in the soft serve machine?" I would reply "You know, I don't even live in this dormitory. If you have a complaint take it up with the hall council or the manager, because bitching to me about it sure won't get what you want." It was a fun reaction watching the complainer goggle more than a bit. :) What was the management going to do to me at that point? I got my own small Peter Gibbons (Office Space) moment.

(Of course the job I left for ended up being far, far worse in the long run.)

Posted by Crimfan | January 2, 2009 7:18 PM

George Ingraham, your comment is there under Fish's NYTimes column, and a great comment it is.

FYI, it's # 545. NYT can take up to a day to post comments, for some reason, but they're not censor happy like the swifter WaPo. (To WaPo's credit, they do kick them right with a polite request you merely sub a different word.)

Posted by Janice Huth Byer | January 4, 2009 7:20 PM