A few months ago, a coworker of mine named Joel had an epic meltdown at work. So epic they actually mention it now during training as what NOT do to when a customer frustrates you.
He received a call, during which he graduately raised his voice until he SCREAMED at the customer “WHEN YOU’RE THIS STUPID YOU DON’T DESERVE MY HELP!”, was told by a supervisor to calm himself, ripped his headset off while the customer was still on the line, and threw it at the computer screen hard enough to break it beyond repair.
He vacated the premises and everyone involved agreed it was best if he never showed his face again.
And to be honest, at my job, everyone who witnessed that has more or less admitted that wanting to have a “Joel meltdown” is a near daily occurence.
I DO understand that when a person ages, their brain changes and things like memory, learning, and thinking speed decreases in quality.
But when you give someone simple instructions, they confirm the instructions twice, STILL ask you how to perform the task and then does it wrong or tells you they’ve tried when there is no way in heck they did, I see it as “I’ve decided this is hard so I won’t try to use my remaining brain cells”.
I do a LOT of cases that involve a customer downloading a file and accept three dialogue boxes. I explain to each and every one of them that these boxes will show up on the screen, and that they are to press the button that either says “ok”, “yes”, or “accept”. (The other button will say ‘cancel’…)
STILL around 70% of them will insist on reading EVERY dialogue box out loud in its entirety, ask me which option to click, and if I say “click ok”, most likely respond with “You said to click ok? Is that what I should do? Should I click ok?”
Do NOT come here and tell me that behaviour is anything but voluntarily shutting off brain functions.
I can imagine these people trying to bake. They get to the part in the recipe that says “add two teaspoons of sugar”. They open their drawer, and there’s two different brands of teaspoons in it, the brands slightly differing in size.
THESE PEOPLE would not like most people just grab one and use it.
THESE PEOPLE would grab one of each and yell “Which one do I use? They’re different! What if something goes wrong? I’m so confused!”
That kind of helplessness, unless you have a genuine learning disorder, is something you learn, and decide to nurture.
I guess all I wanted with this rant was to let out some steam.
But if anyone has any experience on how to keep experiences like this from rotting my soul, I’d be very grateful