Something this article (nor the related NY Times article you also posted) doesn't mention: The effects of increasingly customer-hostile and exploitative policie

Something this article (nor the related NY Times article you also posted) doesn't mention: The effects of increasingly customer-hostile and exploitative policies from corporations employing these service workers. As this article opens, "I was trying to cancel this contract we’d been roped into" it's onto the right path. Some company policy-makers decided that exploiting their customers was a good way to increase profits, and left the powerless front-line service worker to simply be the firewall to stop the consequences of the decision from flowing back to the decision-makers. People are rightfully angry at how they are being squeezed, and with no way to materially affect the decisions that torment them, they are fed up. In the theoretical magic free markets, the customers would take their business elsewhere when they get no satisfaction, but when the choice is between Comcast Xfinity and CenturyLink, for example, customers know that there's no real choice.