Angry Communications
Sep. 21st, 2009 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI was just reading a post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bodhifox about people being nasty on the phone with him, and it occurs to me that everyone I know who works in a job that has them answering phones has stories about people who are horrible and rude and abusive. It seems that callers fall mainly into two categories: neutral and abusive. For every 100 callers, I'd say about fifteen to twenty are rude or abusive in some fashion, most range from barely tolerable to just polite, and maybe one (if I'm lucky) is deliberately pleasant with me.
I'd really like to know what it is that makes people feel it's okay to be that way with complete strangers. It's not just the relative safety of the phone, either. People are abusive with retailers and anyone behind a counter, too.
People just seem to be angry, a lot.
bodhifox about people being nasty on the phone with him, and it occurs to me that everyone I know who works in a job that has them answering phones has stories about people who are horrible and rude and abusive. It seems that callers fall mainly into two categories: neutral and abusive. For every 100 callers, I'd say about fifteen to twenty are rude or abusive in some fashion, most range from barely tolerable to just polite, and maybe one (if I'm lucky) is deliberately pleasant with me.I'd really like to know what it is that makes people feel it's okay to be that way with complete strangers. It's not just the relative safety of the phone, either. People are abusive with retailers and anyone behind a counter, too.
People just seem to be angry, a lot.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 01:08 pm (UTC)However, I know enough people working in these kinds of jobs, and have heard many a tale which convinces me that a large percentage of angry callers are getting angry at the company for their own mistakes (i.e. are idiots who don't know what they're doing), and that's less fair :x "I don't know how to make this work/haven't read the manual/can't manage my own finances/etc so clearly it is your fault!"