You stare gloomily outside the foggy windows of your car as you drive the long winding, traffic-loaded roads on your way to work. The clouds look foreboding, and you know it's about to rain, judging from their dark, gray color. Finally, you pull up to the office parking lot, your car splashing through muddy puddles. Though it's hard to imagine, this is the least miserable moment of your day. Picture it yet? Congratulations, you work in customer service. One person recounts their experience, wor…

This sales associate was perfectly fine with breaking a customer's computer just to make his own life easier. While buying new technology, things can get confusing pretty quickly if you aren't the most tech-savvy person . If you're buying a computer in person, for example, you might go into the store knowing exactly what you're looking for. But then a sales associate starts talking to you, and suddenly they're telling you that computer won't work for you. Instead, they say, you should get one t…

This woman told a whopper of a lie, but she wasn't expecting to be called out . Customers learn their behaviors by reinforcement. While it might seem obvious to you to be pleasant to the person on the other end of a phone call , not everyone acts that way. Some folks have been conditioned to believe that the louder and more demanding they act towards customer service reps, the faster their problem will be solved. In reality, as call center workers will tell you, this is almost never the case. M…

Imagine how audacious you'd have to be to expect a free upgrade everywhere you go? Like if you were heading to the mechanic for a tire rotation and expected a full new set of tires. Or if you had coach tickets for your flight home for the holidays and Jeff Bezos just showed up to the tarmac insisting you take his private jet instead. Feels silly, huh?

This pool salesman has been on the job long enough to know that some customers can't be convinced to buy the products they need. Customers often like to think they know everything about a product just because they own it. In this case, the owner of a pool was pretty sure he knew everything he needed to know about his swimming pool. How hard could it be to maintain one little pool? All you have to do is fill it and empty it seasonally, and put in some chlorine or salt. Right? Surely there's noth…

This story is a peek into the a life of a DMV manager and her least friendly employee. If you've ever been to the DMV before, I'm so sorry. They're usually one giant room full of chairs and workers behind numbered desks. As a customer, you show up ready to renew a license or passport, and then it's time to wait. It's best to bring a book or a crossword puzzle and just expect that you may spend several hours there.

You've probably heard about the “Ship of Theseus,” a paradoxical thought experiment that challenges you to question whether or not an object that has had all of its parts replaced is actually the same object anymore. Another variant of this is the "grandfather’s axe," which seeks to challenge whether or not an axe that has had its handle replaced and then later its head is really the same axe as it was before. Although not really quite the same philosophical question, I can't help but wonder… I…

No offense to this woman, but if you're in a super big rush , why are you stopping at a restaurant? We've all been there: you're out on the go somewhere, maybe between jobs or between meetings, and you suddenly get that rumble in your stomach. When you're hungry, every restaurant looks appealing. If you have an hour or two to spare, stopping into a sit-down dining establishment is a great way to have a break and refuel.

Accusing a hotel front desk agent of fraud is probably not the best way to get them to help you. Remember: these are the people that can make your stay exponentially easier or exponentially more difficult. It's also worth noting that so much of this drama can be easily resolved if people remember to book their hotel stays directly on the hotel website rather than through a third-party site. The number of instances in which we have seen irate customers make this mistake through Internet stories…

Working in a call center is a pretty thankless gig. Constantly dealing with less-than-kind customers who are frustrated at your company's refusal to help them with their problem with your product—which to be fair, is a known issue that the company has deemed to be too expensive to resolve. So, now you're bearing the brunt of that frustration on a daily basis because your wage for 20 years still costs far less than paying R&D to fix the issue.

Even though she was only 17 years old, this woman was already an expert on koi and other tropical fish . It's fortuitous that she got a job to match, starting off at a retail tropical fish store. Whether you have a pet or not, spending time at pet stores is a fun and free activity to do. Many stores have tons of cats and dogs, some have gerbils or birds, and others have aisles and aisles of fish tanks. As far as retail jobs go, I imagine this is a pretty calm place to work most of the time.

When you don't want fast food but also don't want to pay $35 for an entree, it might be time to head to a chain restaurant. The prices of everything these days have gone up to utterly comical levels. While looking to find a nice dinner at a spot in Manhattan, I found one place that looked stunning. Then, I took a peek at their menu to find that the cheapest item was an $18 appetizer of potato chips. Just let that sink in: nearly $20 for potato chips, as the cheapest menu item . I weep for the f…

Supermarkets are already a relatively overwhelming experience for most of us, akin to navigating a labyrinth that's been starkly lit by harsh-white fluorescent lighting while a string of the most infuriatingly mundane acoustic covers of songs that were popular ten years ago play omnipresently throughout.

It must be difficult to be a barista if you don't like to make coffee. Or to be clear, it seems like some baristas look down on anyone who doesn't like their coffee black. They seemingly have a personal vendetta against the vast majority of coffee drinks who don't want their bean juice to be bitter and scalding. Lots of people love frappes or lattes or any number of blended coffee drinks, and this love is fueled by social media “secret menu” hacks. When social media was in its younger years, a…

Have strength retail workers , you will need it when these customers show up. As a cashier, you'll ring up hundreds of customers each shift, and you'll probably forget all of them, except those who are exceptional. Maybe they're especially kind in a job where many customers are impolite. Or maybe they're really funny and manage to make you laugh. Or, if you're these people, you've remembered the customer because they've asked some of the most absurd questions ever. Several people who worked in…

Karens have the uncanny ability to identify, single out, and berate people who work customer service jobs, accosting them with wanton fury regardless of whether or not they even happen to be working at that time—or are even employed by that place at all.