Yeah, I haven't written in almost 2 years (yikes) but I'm coming back to the blog. It's actually a shame that I'm coming back in a rant but hey...it is what it is.
My wife and I were lying in bed the other afternoon. Not going to sleep. Just hanging out BS'ing. We started talking about how I've always been sort of an impatient person, but it's when she said that it's gotten worse over the years that I really started to evaluate that and where she would have gotten that idea. You know what? She's right.
It is very difficult to accurately describe the feeling I get when things start to annoy me. I'm certain that others get their own feelings and they may even be similar. The closest I can come is saying that the hairs on the back of my neck start to "stand up." There is a bit of a panicked feeling and then I immediately want whatever the disturbance is to just stop. I don't care how or what is going on, I just want it ceased. It's almost like a pain threshold has been met and no "hysteresis region" to deal with it (like a buffer). Come to think of it, I recently saw an article in one of the more popular news magazines (can't remember which one) that cited a study illustrating that the brain makes no distinction between physical and mental/emotional pain. Interesting subject for sure.
In my self-evaluation regarding my impatience, I began to compare myself to other people I know. I tried to mentally separate those which had similar tendencies (outside of my private-life impatience). One of the criteria for my grouping was trying to determine who shared an overall distaste for the general public. To clarify, I'm what many would consider cold-hearted. Although this is only the case when it is regarding people I have no connection with. Brutal truth? Japanese earthquakes, Haitian catastrophes, and New Orleans Hurricanes don't really bother me that much. It is only when things directly affect me or people who I care about that I feel remorse. What many would find even more odd is that I don't even seem to feel bad about not feeling bad. Is that normal? I'm going out on a limb here and I'm going to assume that yes, it is normal for many people. I also believe that there are many who won't admit that they feel this way (or "don't feel" rather).
So, who do I know that I think are most like me when it comes to disliking people in general? Retail workers. It's a snowball effect that I can't place a starting point on from personal experience, but working with the populace on a daily basis desensitizes us to people's concerns, I believe. At minimum, I think that is the case when working with people in that capacity. There are most certainly jobs which provide various services for people that I think the workers in those fields can find great satisfaction. Retail employees, however, don't get that same sense of fulfillment in most cases.
Those who know me also know that for various reasons, I waited to obtain my undergraduate degree until later on (i.e., 34 when I graduated). In my perspective, that allowed me to take subject matters and immediately process them into more application based scenarios rather than someone with much less life-experience than I. Of course, I would also submit that those who experienced higher education at ages even older than mine had an even greater applied education. In 2006, I was in a lower division basic macroeconomics class. In one very short portion of a lesson, we covered something that I think back to very often in my work. There was a small box on one of the pages in our text that illustrated how American GDP has moved at a steady pace from being industrial based to a service related economy. As of the printed date of that text, an estimated 76% of American jobs were now in the generically labeled "service industry." So, what does that mean and how does it relate to retail employees' attitude toward people?
Although I would love to do the research to back it (too lazy to be honest), I think it's probably safe to assume that our collective environments and atmospheres deeply (and perhaps even subconsciously) affect how we process information. In the industrial times, aside from engineers, people were subject to a more "mechanical" existence. Things worked this way, that way, or not at all. There was most likely very little room for subjectivity. This could also be what lead to our overwhelming conservative way of life, but I'll save that discussion for another time. In these times, I believe it was easy for a business owner/manager to go out of their way to help a customer because it wasn't a big deal. It served the greater good of both the business (brought the customer back) and the customer (they were unexpectedly and individually satisfied). As more businesses notice these trends, it is easy for an entrepreneur to emulate the behavior. Hey, still a great thing for the honest customer. With more businesses being put into place in order to provide a service, the natural human tendency to expect things that have a precedence set starts to grow. This is a cycle that keeps going; more services to satisfy customers, less industry to create products for consumer demand.
This is where greed and entitlement start to rear their ugly heads. Yep. I brought those up...because that's what it really boils down to. There have been countless times where a customer has made an unreasonable request, the request has not been granted, and they have said to me "whatever happened to 'the customer is always right?'" My immediate reaction mentally was to roll my eyes. It screams "I WANT I WANT I WANT." In today's economy, businesses are now having to take a step back and tell customers "no" more often than they used to because at the end of the day, it's just not profitable. Just 4 years ago, a well known cell phone provider began cancelling their subscribers' accounts when they felt that the customers were taking advantage of the goodwill of the company. Many people frowned on that and I think the people who did view that negatively probably had that same sense of entitlement themselves and could therefore relate. To me, it was a bold move and something that I applaud. Why? Because we're not 5 years old anymore. We don't win all the time and there isn't even going to always be a participation ribbon.
Basically, when things don't go people's way, it's a crisis. Who deals with that on a consumer level? That's right; those same retail employees from earlier. The sob stories, the obvious lies, the demanding nature, and the absolute laziness I see from people who expect things from the companies I have worked for has been enough to cause me to just not care about them anymore. There is nothing fulfilling about solving their problems because they're typically avoidable on the customer end and the customers are rarely truly grateful anyway. And the people I know who work in retail generally all feel the same way. You know what's funny about retail employees? Find one that you know and ask them about "customers" in general. See how they respond both verbally and non-verbally. Even if they smile while making fun of some scenarios, see if you can see the common theme. We eventually just stop caring.
Yeah, this was a rather long one. I could actually keep going but I feel that the point has been made on this one. I doubt anyone reads my blog anyway. But here it is.
