Empathy for the Workforce

By Ron Signore

Recently, I observed something that really got on my nerves. Let me paint the picture for you…my daughter and I were travelling for her soccer camp down in the Indianapolis area. First of all, I hate fast food. I am very open to use the word hate in this instance and know I am not exaggerating. However, when you are on the road and time is limited, you don’t always have a choice to avoid those establishments.

Being a fat kid, there is no doubt I get “hangry” often. My patience runs thin, I become irritable, and dive into the zone to focus on getting fed. I will sit on my high horse and say when I am hangry in public, I never go in attack mode. That is to say that I take the approach of “one gets more bees with honey,” as I engage with those employed to provide food in the food service industry. I am not sure if I have always been this mellow in this circumstance, but I feel like if I ever was, the turning point was viewing the movie “Waiting,” with Ryan Reynolds. Just the simple lesson of not aggravating those who handle your food.

We have all been in these scenarios at one time or another. In fact, I had multiple problems this weekend down in Indianapolis. Both mornings of my daughter’s soccer events, I stopped at Dunkin’ and ordered a large black coffee for me, and munchkins for my daughter. She is blessed with my wife’s high metabolism, so eating junk food like that has a minimal impact, especially since we only do this once in a while. I digress…

Still a little immature, it takes me a few minutes to start drinking coffee due to the temperature. It amazes me how some people have no problem starting with the scalding hot temperature immediately. It was maybe 5 minutes from Dunkin’ to our soccer facility, so I drove accordingly, parked, opened the lid, and hoped it would cool fairly quickly.

When that time came, I took my first sip. I immediately cringed with wonder if I was drinking hot chocolate. While I am not diabetic yet, I really don’t like sweat things and very rarely eat or drink things that are sugary. I realized I had made a rookie mistake. I didn’t check the sticker of the order on the cup before I drove off. Apparently, the drive-thru employee handed me a large coffee with a hazelnut shot and 4 cream.

My sweet 9-year-old immediately felt bad. Where this goes from here is the path less traveled for far too many. Instead of ranting and raving that Dunkin’ screwed up or taking any type of “whoa is me” approach, I simply expressed to my daughter that these things happen. Mistakes happen. It was an easy message to deliver since I could associate that no one is perfect, just like her efforts in soccer. Mistakes are just opportunities to learn. In this case, I needed to go back to basics and confirm my order before I drove off.

The action I saw earlier in the weekend is a path that we recognize far more than we should. Social media has done a “great” job of providing us those public examples of “Karen’ism” at large. People are continuously taking that path of entitlement and projecting abuse to people trying to earn a dollar and live.

Somewhere along the line, we allowed the concept of the customer is always right to be the end all be all. In doing so, organizations respond out of fear, and take whatever hit may be coming. Hits could come in the form of free product, or punishment to the end line workers. Either way, we have lost sight on so many areas of this circumstance that it has allowed a multitude of negative effects.

For starters, when we look at the demographic of workers in the food service industry, a great portion are either in school at some level, elder, or of minority descent. However, I could not care less about the demographics in this case. It doesn’t matter who is on the receiving end of an abusive customer. No person deserves the belittling aggression provided by what has now become known as a Karen. I am not sure if there is a “male” term for ‘Karen,’ but the most appropriate term by degrees of vulgarity in a public forum would be jerk.

Sadly, this branches out beyond the food service industry. It has become any industry where humans are in a position to provide a service or accommodation to customers. By allowing this type of power to the customer, we have put our business in jeopardy. We have eliminated any differentiators in every given industry. Karen will walk into McDonald’s, order a cheeseburger, and cause a scene because it isn’t $.59 like it was years ago; or there is too much of a certain ingredient by chance. Or the fact that it took longer than they wanted to wait to receive.

It is acceptable to be frustrated. Never dismiss your feelings, that isn’t healthy either. However, no matter how imperfect, no matter how wrong your order is, you do not have the right to treat people like inferior garbage. Of course, I have had to send back something for one reason or another, and I have had more than just the coffee episode where I have received the wrong order from what I placed.

There’s a significant amount of time where things break down somewhere in the process, people are human- and for those of you who want to blame technology, that even furthers my point. That front desk hotel clerk cannot always accommodate a request. I cannot tell you how many times I have travelled, usually for business, where my flight has been delayed, or something has caused me to arrive at my hotel later than expected. There is not much worse than one desk clerk at the hotel, another customer ahead of you, complaining they didn’t get their upgrade even though they are a “super platinum elite king” status for the hotel and they should automatically get upgraded.

This is where I definitely slip. I start to put my union boss hat on and express my frustration with the customer ahead of me. I stand up for the worker. I stand up for those who maybe cannot defend themselves. I kind of grew up with that mentality. It bothers me to see someone get picked on. Exponentially when someone demeans the relationship and interaction to a customer versus worker perspective with the expectation that they are owed the world.

And while all this ticks me off. While all the Karen’s expect the world to bend for them, despite the metaphoric billionaire expectations on a Kroger branded soda budget, they have legitimately shot themselves in the foot. We sit at record low unemployment as a nation under President Biden. We have recouped and exceeded all jobs lost by Cheeto Boy during the pandemic. Companies are seeing record profits. Then we come to these minimum wage or entry level customer service positions, and we see the majority of vacancies.

Workers have learned that loyalty to workers is not the norm. The only thing that matters to organizations that employee these types of positions is the P&L statement. These roles are the most open positions not because people choose to be lazy over having a job. While I get there is always an example of that, the more realistic explanation is the desire not to be put in a position of being demeaned, and of course that level of demeaning correlates with the amount one is paid to be put in that position.

I am sure the “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” people will claim it’s a lack of responsibility, and a role maybe they earned, but their constant abuse has backfired. Quality workers will not put up with that. The reduction in quality workers in the applicant pool has forced leaders into either a path of hiring anybody who can breathe to fill a role, or being short staffed, which stretches workers thin and causes burnout. Either way, it is a lose-lose for the business. It is a lose-lose for customers who expect more. It is a lose-lose for the employees. Basically, nobody wins.

The customer is NOT always right. If they were always right, they wouldn’t need you. We need to reevaluate the line between keeping a customer happy and cutting losses in many scenarios. We cannot allow for this type of treatment of our workforce because the notion of the customer is always right. At this point in time, we need to use that evaluation and essentially apply the 80/20 rule. Let 80% of the customers who maybe make you 20% of your revenue walk. Focus on who makes you 80% of your revenue. Maybe not exact numbers, but that type of concept.

There is no desire to ignore accountability. If the order is wrong, or if the reservation is lost, work to find a resolution for the customer. You would be surprised how far just a little bit of empathy goes in fixing an issue. We can all do better, but the second you reduce someone to the level of being beneath you just because you are a customer, you are a big part of what is wrong with the world.

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