Something that I enjoy is being the anti-Karen. I most often do it by email, but occasionally I speak to the manager in person, and I say that the service I received was exceptional. Sometimes I leverage my autism in this, because if I have had a good experience, there’s a decent likelihood that the additional struggles due to being autistic are a component in my gratefulness. I always make sure to get the name of the person who helped me so I can reference them in the anti-complaint, because I know that a glowing review from a customer can make a huge impact when it comes to performance reviews, bonuses and promotion
Important tip: if someone gives you free stuff or a discretionary discount, no they didn’t. You can still effusively praise the service you received, but do not mention the free stuff, because that can end up having the opposite of your intended effect and result in the helpful and kind person being chewed out by the manager
On the other hand, this is a perfect position for some member of the management team you want to get rid off, but still have a long-term contract with.
If complaint depts actually existed and were intended to be helpful, the current relationship with customers would be better.
A ton of the negativity these days comes from knowing you are always talking to an ineffectual drone who possesses no power. And often times they also seem to lack any motivation to have any empathy. Due to low pay, shitty policies forced upon them, and being forced to do the support over the phone.
The way everything is structured today is just terrible. And it’s in part because these companies insist on growing to a scale where good support is impossible to provide without major price increases. It’s all fucked.
I had to contact Spotify support recently because they pushed an update which broke their Linux client, had to go through a “live chat” with a useless bot before being put through to a human. That human dumped the error and explanation I gave them into an LLM and just pasted that output to pretend they knew what was happening, then spent an hour ignoring that entirely and asking nonesense questions supposedly to identify the issue which was already clearly identified. Their only recommendation was to post on the community forums (wtf?), unsurprisingly nearly a week later it’s still broken. Last time I had to post on the community forums was two years ago for a regression bug raised two years before then, no attempt has been made to fix that one either but at least that doesn’t literally prevent you from using the service.
Not quite as bad as when I spent months calling my energy company because they tried to fraudulently charge over £2,000 (I forget the exact numbers) to my account after I called about a nonsense bill (turns out they were trying to get me to pay my neighbor’s bill?). They made absolutely no attempt to fix that. Unsurprisingly everything was fixed instantly when they took long enough that I could escalate to a legal issue. They didn’t get fined nearly enough for that one, they’re definitely stealing from other people in the same way.
Before that it was Microsoft, there was some issue with my Windows installation and their solution was to wipe my entire drive including all my data.
In my experience customer service lines aren’t there to help you, they’re there to piss you off as much as possible so you stop using their product or service. I have honestly no idea why companies choose to pay for that but it does explain why they’re happy to use LLMs; they could not care less about actually helping customers.
I suppose I should bring up some positive stories about customer service lines but there really isn’t that many. When I was young Steam support once helped me regain access to an account I’d locked myself out of, that was nice. From what I’ve heard Steam support isn’t great any more either though.
Are you still using Spotify today?
There’s also some blame to put on consumers. A large portion of the complaint queue is Karens who sap the will to live of any worker who has to deal with them.
Especially in countries where getting something for free by complaining is celebrated.
Reminds me of how service industry workers are so used to negativity now that it’s depressing
I got charged too much by insurance for a low 3 digit amount. When talking to their support the employee said I am very calm given the situation. I was a bit surprised and said “Well, it’s not pocket change, but fortunately I am in a position where the amount is not life threatening”. Apparently they are used to much worse.
Nancy really made his bald head shine!
Wasn’t she a nazi in one of the other comics?
“The Girls’ Club of America” used the Swastika before the Nazis. It was originally a sign of good fortune and good health used by new age health types. Much closer to how we think of the Peace symbol.
That’s why The Nazis used it, it had youth appeal and good sentiment. The Nazis advertised themselves as being a health and good living movement. That’s part of where their love of healthy ideal bodies and features came from.
They believed in hiking, and young people forming bands, and camping and practicing music and singing and marching in alpine hikes. All very wholesome healthy stuff.
We know now what they were, but they were seen very differently at the time.
Good thing we know better now. gestures at RFK and the way he talks about MAHA.
Nancy?!
Given the time frame it was published it wouldn’t surprise me if there was something where they got referenced at least. Dr. Seuss and Disney had a lot of war comics I know.
The only reference I can find related to that says she was adopted to be part of the French resistance (not by the original artist(s).)
Mafalda from Argentina looks similar, but again nothing about being a Nazi that I can find.
