So there's this concept on
customers_suck called Zorro, and it is a thing outlawed by edict of the mod. From the comm's userinfo (because why think up your own definition when there's one readily available?):
aka Pwning your customers or pwning someone else’s. You are a professional- rise above the suck folks.I completely understand why this rule is needed. No one should be proud of being a douchebag, on either side of the counter. And this is a huge, huge community dealing with some incendiary subjects, so the mod has to be strict with the rules lest the entire thing collapse into a giant pile of wank.
But... I've been thinking a lot about the concept of Zorro (in between angsting over the job thing, obv.), and I've been reading
Not Always Right which often has the kinds of stories that wouldn't be allowed on c_s, and I've been thinking - maybe a Zorro's not necessarily a bad thing.
There's a line, obviously. There's no call for violence or verbal abuse or anything like that. But there's a tendency in this country (don't know about any others) to regard people in the service industries as objects: people mistreat them with no more thought than they would give to kicking a chair. This isn't helped by the fact that most companies, especially the big chains that employ lots of part-time minimum-wage folks, have a 'bend over and take it' policy as regards to these things. They don't back up their employees when they're being abused, they'll willingly lose money to keep a customer from making a scene, and they'll even fire an employee at the whim of some guy who's having a bad day. People learn that they can get anything they want by throwing a tantrum, and they can swear at and hurt the people who sell them coffee or something without consequences. Imagine being so powerless, so
without value to the people you serve and the people who employ you. No wonder retail is so soul-crushing.
That's why I'm in favor of the Zorro. Or something like it, anyway. I think (hope) that a bit of snark, or even something as simple as 'Ma'am/sir, you're behaving like a five-year-old,' might go a long way toward shocking the consumers of our society into remembering that the people they are dealing with are, above all,
human, and deserve a certain level of respect. It would also help the employees themselves retain their humanity, and not lose all sense of their self-worth just because they presently scan groceries for a living.
This, of course, would all depend on the employers' tolerance for such shenanigans: a tech support monkey who isn't sure that her supervisor has her back is less likely to respond to abuse with "No, my lack of a penis doesn't prevent me from knowing my way around computers. I'll give you a second to get over the shock." And, well, corporations tend to be pretty spineless entities, so figure the odds.
Still. It'd be nice. Healing the world with snark, or something.
*cue the John Lennon music*
calm
silly
creative
contemplative
confused
exanimate
drained
embarrassed
bored
bouncy