4 ms·

Maybe I'm being insensitive, but why would anyone burst in to tears for making a reasonable request that _indirectly_ causing somebody to have a crappy day at w

Maybe I'm being insensitive, but why would anyone burst in to tears for making a reasonable request that _indirectly_ causing somebody to have a crappy day at work? Furthermore, it's not even apparent that she really did ruin the day of these delivery folks. They probably got paid nicely to go through all that trouble. The fact that it took all day for the social media team to find somebody willing to go that extra mile implies to me that there were likely several people who turned down that sale/delivery. Even if they were pressured in to that delivery by some contract or power-play, it's not her fault that she demanded quality service. Twitter et al are making companies accountable for their shortcomings. As a result, the treatment of customers is improving steadily across many industries. Like with anything, sometimes you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

ricardobeat 14y ago
That's pretty direct to me. I'd guess that late-night delivery is not part of the standard service, and they only did for the fear of upheaval on twitter. Anyway, the blame is not on the customer, the company could have scheduled delivery for early next morning and that would be absolutely reasonable.
ceol 14y ago
I'm not sure about Home Depot, but when I worked [generic retail job] and witnessed my manager drive to customers' houses after hours to help install components— even going with her on occasion— it was clear she wasn't getting "paid nicely to go through all that trouble." She did it because she knew if she did that extra bit, those people would be way more likely to come back and spend money at the store. But there was never a guarantee, and almost every time was additional stress she really didn't need. What the author experienced is something a lot of the tech community seems to lack: empathy. She realized that an elderly couple went far out of their way to deliver a heavy AC unit to a person who might not ever come back to their store. She realized the only reason they were out there was because of her, because she didn't want to wait two weeks. Any normal person would feel like crap.
- snprbob86 14y ago
  "She did it because she knew if she did that extra bit, those people would be way more likely to come back and spend money at the store. But there was never a guarantee, and almost every time was additional stress she really didn't need." It doesn't sound like her job was at risk if she said "no", so if it wasn't worth it: she shouldn't have done it. I'd consider myself a normal person. Hell, I think I have more sympathy, if not empathy, than the average patron. However, if you choose to do something shitty, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you're forced to do something shitty, then that's a different matter. In this case, it sounds like the people who made the delivery were either A) not all that inconvenienced B) inconvenienced by their own inability to say "no" or C) inconvenienced by an ignorant parent company who chose to chase after a social-media "WOW" story at the expense of their personel. At most, the author of this post should have said "Oh, if I had realized it was this much trouble, I'd have waited a few extra days." Being deeply upset by something so trivial seems like unnecessarily sweating the small stuff. It's particularly silly because she had absolutely no reason to think that Home Depot couldn't find a strong day laborer on short notice.
  - jessedhillon 14y ago
    Fucking Hell. With all the smart people on HN, why can't we have things like a filter for "author has worked a real job once in their life" or "author possesses overinflated sense of own empathy while directly demonstrating contempt for no good reason" You know, I'm trying really hard not to flame you, I really am. It comes off as extremely douchey to tell people whose problems are much harder than yours -- and if you have time to comment on HN, this is true -- that they can always say no. It's extremely presumptuous, to say the least, to enumerate someone else's life options and then write off their current difficulties as a matter of choice. Why don't these old people just go to college so they can get a professional job? Completely incompatible with the idea of being empathetic, which implies understanding of someone's situation on an emotional level, not just a rational level.
    - snprbob86 14y ago
      "implies understanding of someone's situation on an emotional level, not just a rational level." You've identified the difference between sympathy and empathy. OK, fine. I have plenty of sympathy, but no empathy in this situation. I deeply understand that this must suck for people who don't have a choice. All I'm saying is that it's absolutely ridiculous to cry over the fact that somebody else's superior forced them to work late/hard one night. The original author should not feel any culpability for that. If there's any emotion I'd share here, it would be anger at those superiors, not a sense of guilt. "It comes off as extremely douchey to tell people [...] that they can always say no." The person I replied to was talking about a different person and suggested that person went the extra mile, hoping for some repeat business. That is absolutely optional. I have no idea if the delivery people in the original story had a choice, but I wasn't speaking about them.
mturmon 14y ago
"They probably got paid nicely to go through all that trouble. " If they really were in store management, they would be salaried workers, and therefore not paid for overtime. They would likely have been compensated for mileage and tolls during the delivery.
wisty 14y ago
Because she forced good people, people like her, to do a late-night delivery. If it was some young guy (preferably with tattoos) on minimum wage, she'd probably have been a lot less upset. Seeing people doing jobs that aren't stereotypical can trigger cognitive dissonance (is that the right term?). Some people justify "demeaning" jobs because only certain people (men, women, young people, old people, poor people, immigrants) do them. When someone who doesn't fit the stereotype does the job, it creates dissonance.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Yes, but that's not her fault Resources management is a company problem. They could have proposed another time for her that wouldn't imply extra hours They (the company) chose to go the extra mile and should be commanded. That extra mile between employers and the company should be settled between themselves. Well, if my employer makes me do night deliveries without compensation of any sort I start to look at other options.
  - michaelfeathers 14y ago
    .@homedepot Shame on you for sending people across town after their workday to solve my problem. I actually expected to see that at the end of the story
  - brazzy 14y ago
    > They (the company) chose to go the extra mile and should be commanded. No, it didn't, and it shouldn't. The company chose to have cheap but shitty service and give unsustainable special treatment to irate customers who might create PR problems, while service for those without a Twitter account and entitlement issues remains shitty. Actually everytime I hear a story like this, my opinion of the company in question goes down a lot. Good customer service doesn't mean having a separate department that can order around the peons to work overtime handling special cases. It means fixing processes so that those special cases don't occur.
curiouscats 14y ago
I agree completely. I don't understand why companies provide better support over Twitter (it is a bad idea as far as I can tell - they just have generally lousy customer service and for some reason change for Twitter, to some degree). The foolish response of relying on non-sustainable heroic efforts by employees to provide customer service is feeble. But the customer is not responsible for stupid management actions. Now customers can be unreasonable and if you are doing that it makes sense to me to feel some culpability for the outcome of your bad behavior (even if others had to enable the bad outcome too). Just based on the post it does seem to me the request was unreasonable. It is true, sadly, both customers and employees suffer from very bad systems management has put in place for customer support.
- brazzy 14y ago
  > I don't understand why companies provide better support over Twitter (it is a bad idea as far as I can tell - they just have generally lousy customer service and for some reason change for Twitter, to some degree). It's very simple: regular frontline workers represent a large chunk of the total costs of the company (let's say 30%, so you keep them underpaid and overworked to keep profits high. But social media is the domain of PR - much fewer people, much better paid, much more visible to management, and able to order around even middle management when it's for the good of the company's image.

ricardobeat 14y ago

That's pretty direct to me. I'd guess that late-night delivery is not part of the standard service, and they only did for the fear of upheaval on twitter. Anyway, the blame is not on the customer, the company could have scheduled delivery for early next morning and that would be absolutely reasonable.

ceol 14y ago

I'm not sure about Home Depot, but when I worked [generic retail job] and witnessed my manager drive to customers' houses after hours to help install components— even going with her on occasion— it was clear she wasn't getting "paid nicely to go through all that trouble." She did it because she knew if she did that extra bit, those people would be way more likely to come back and spend money at the store. But there was never a guarantee, and almost every time was additional stress she really didn't need. What the author experienced is something a lot of the tech community seems to lack: empathy. She realized that an elderly couple went far out of their way to deliver a heavy AC unit to a person who might not ever come back to their store. She realized the only reason they were out there was because of her, because she didn't want to wait two weeks. Any normal person would feel like crap.

snprbob86 14y ago
"She did it because she knew if she did that extra bit, those people would be way more likely to come back and spend money at the store. But there was never a guarantee, and almost every time was additional stress she really didn't need." It doesn't sound like her job was at risk if she said "no", so if it wasn't worth it: she shouldn't have done it. I'd consider myself a normal person. Hell, I think I have more sympathy, if not empathy, than the average patron. However, if you choose to do something shitty, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you're forced to do something shitty, then that's a different matter. In this case, it sounds like the people who made the delivery were either A) not all that inconvenienced B) inconvenienced by their own inability to say "no" or C) inconvenienced by an ignorant parent company who chose to chase after a social-media "WOW" story at the expense of their personel. At most, the author of this post should have said "Oh, if I had realized it was this much trouble, I'd have waited a few extra days." Being deeply upset by something so trivial seems like unnecessarily sweating the small stuff. It's particularly silly because she had absolutely no reason to think that Home Depot couldn't find a strong day laborer on short notice.
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  Fucking Hell. With all the smart people on HN, why can't we have things like a filter for "author has worked a real job once in their life" or "author possesses overinflated sense of own empathy while directly demonstrating contempt for no good reason" You know, I'm trying really hard not to flame you, I really am. It comes off as extremely douchey to tell people whose problems are much harder than yours -- and if you have time to comment on HN, this is true -- that they can always say no. It's extremely presumptuous, to say the least, to enumerate someone else's life options and then write off their current difficulties as a matter of choice. Why don't these old people just go to college so they can get a professional job? Completely incompatible with the idea of being empathetic, which implies understanding of someone's situation on an emotional level, not just a rational level.
  - snprbob86 14y ago
    "implies understanding of someone's situation on an emotional level, not just a rational level." You've identified the difference between sympathy and empathy. OK, fine. I have plenty of sympathy, but no empathy in this situation. I deeply understand that this must suck for people who don't have a choice. All I'm saying is that it's absolutely ridiculous to cry over the fact that somebody else's superior forced them to work late/hard one night. The original author should not feel any culpability for that. If there's any emotion I'd share here, it would be anger at those superiors, not a sense of guilt. "It comes off as extremely douchey to tell people [...] that they can always say no." The person I replied to was talking about a different person and suggested that person went the extra mile, hoping for some repeat business. That is absolutely optional. I have no idea if the delivery people in the original story had a choice, but I wasn't speaking about them.

mturmon 14y ago

"They probably got paid nicely to go through all that trouble. " If they really were in store management, they would be salaried workers, and therefore not paid for overtime. They would likely have been compensated for mileage and tolls during the delivery.

wisty 14y ago

Because she forced good people, people like her, to do a late-night delivery. If it was some young guy (preferably with tattoos) on minimum wage, she'd probably have been a lot less upset. Seeing people doing jobs that aren't stereotypical can trigger cognitive dissonance (is that the right term?). Some people justify "demeaning" jobs because only certain people (men, women, young people, old people, poor people, immigrants) do them. When someone who doesn't fit the stereotype does the job, it creates dissonance.

raverbashing 14y ago
Yes, but that's not her fault Resources management is a company problem. They could have proposed another time for her that wouldn't imply extra hours They (the company) chose to go the extra mile and should be commanded. That extra mile between employers and the company should be settled between themselves. Well, if my employer makes me do night deliveries without compensation of any sort I start to look at other options.
- michaelfeathers 14y ago
  .@homedepot Shame on you for sending people across town after their workday to solve my problem. I actually expected to see that at the end of the story
- brazzy 14y ago
  > They (the company) chose to go the extra mile and should be commanded. No, it didn't, and it shouldn't. The company chose to have cheap but shitty service and give unsustainable special treatment to irate customers who might create PR problems, while service for those without a Twitter account and entitlement issues remains shitty. Actually everytime I hear a story like this, my opinion of the company in question goes down a lot. Good customer service doesn't mean having a separate department that can order around the peons to work overtime handling special cases. It means fixing processes so that those special cases don't occur.

curiouscats 14y ago

I agree completely. I don't understand why companies provide better support over Twitter (it is a bad idea as far as I can tell - they just have generally lousy customer service and for some reason change for Twitter, to some degree). The foolish response of relying on non-sustainable heroic efforts by employees to provide customer service is feeble. But the customer is not responsible for stupid management actions. Now customers can be unreasonable and if you are doing that it makes sense to me to feel some culpability for the outcome of your bad behavior (even if others had to enable the bad outcome too). Just based on the post it does seem to me the request was unreasonable. It is true, sadly, both customers and employees suffer from very bad systems management has put in place for customer support.

brazzy 14y ago
> I don't understand why companies provide better support over Twitter (it is a bad idea as far as I can tell - they just have generally lousy customer service and for some reason change for Twitter, to some degree). It's very simple: regular frontline workers represent a large chunk of the total costs of the company (let's say 30%, so you keep them underpaid and overworked to keep profits high. But social media is the domain of PR - much fewer people, much better paid, much more visible to management, and able to order around even middle management when it's for the good of the company's image.