u/_CaptainAmerica__

Nothing preventing you from getting a receipt from the parking lot, and returning the entire cart because "oh yeah I realized I didn't want anything from this 103,- purchase actually" and walk right out.

If companies are willing to lose this much to theft or refunds that would otherwise never be approved, just cut out all the in-between steps and make everything free, less headache to deal with as well. That's what they've basically done anyway, except now we also have to deal with tantrums when we refuse to refund their 5th purchase this month they apparently realized they didn't want anymore 0.002 seconds after buying it.

Not often, but often enough that it bothers me, we get damage claims for "emotional distress", typically for insane amounts too, as they demand we pay for the therapy they need, and the income they lost due to calling out at work.

What's so emotionally distressing, you may ask? Typically, there was a mouldy grape they accidentally ate at the bottom of their package. Or, their box of 400g of crackers only contained 380g.

I can understand suing to cover medical expenses, especially in the US. But if accidentally eating a bruised strawberry caused so much emotional distress you needed to call in sick for work and require several weeks of therapy, then I kindly invite you to come work here fulltime for a week, then you can decide if that damn strawberry was still so "emotionally distressing".

Now, we never hear about what actually comes from those lawsuit proposals, that's way outside of my job scope. But I can only imagine there's some sort of filter on cases that lawyers/courts are actually willing to take, and that these get thrown out pretty quickly. Still bizarre to see anytime it happens though.

Like I'm not even entirely against AI, but how serious can your complaint be, if you couldn't be bothered to write it? Like I don't care if you used AI to grammar check an email or similar, but an entire message by AI?

How do you know it was AI though? Well, including, but not limited to, citing civil law codes that either don't exist, or are completely unrelated to what the situation is about. People try to come across as serious by citing laws and using legal terms, but just personally, I'm rarely impressed.

Another great indicator, if you do live-chats, is that without showing any typing, they send a 2-4 paragraph message in 2 minutes. Like you did not write that.

Also, idk if customers are aware of this, but we'll help you just as much when you say "can you cancel my subscription" vs writing a 5 paragraph email about how you got scammed by us, and demand a 400,- damage claim for "emotional distress" when your 10,- subscription automatically renewed when you'd rather have cancelled. If anything I'm more likely to provide better help to the former one.

You know, either everyone gets to use AI, or nobody gets to. You can't complain about customer service now being ran by AI(which, in most cases, is only partially true and not as extreme as people make it out to be, with exceptions of course), only for you to then outsource your own complaining to AI.

I mean, pff, look at this trender over here. If you really wanted to be trans, you can easily just call in sick or get a job with less hours to make sure you can reach all your appointments. Yes, 3 of those appointments are just weighing and measuring, but you know, we can't allow fatties to be trans, so we just gotta make *really* sure.

uj/ why is it so hard for any healthcare professionals, but especially those working in trans healthcare and mental health, to understand that people have lives outside of the hospital? I've done most of my medical transition, except bottom surgery, which I just gave up on because of this bullshit. And now I wanted to try therapy because lowk, going to high school as openly trans, and surviving the medical system, is traumatizing. And my GP told me that "If you really wanted to treat your trauma/depression, you have to stop making excuses, you can come back when you're ready for that" after I told her that going to therapy is hard when you work 9-5 fulltime, and doctor's offices are only open 9-5. I can't just call in sick every week on the same day, and right now I can't lose the income I'd lose by getting a job with less hours. Plus, less hours won't guarantee you can actually get the day off you need, anyway.

Grossly underqualified people get hired for high ranking roles all the time, paying up to 6k/month before taxes. And people who might not have the exact certification they want, or like a year less experience than they exactly want, but are like 70-80% qualified get overlooked because "why would we put time/money into training when we can just hire someone who's already qualified".

But then someone with a degree in botany gets hired for supply chain, their business presentations are straight up read from a chatgpt page open on their phone, but somehow still with lots of hesitations and quietness. They constantly need everyone to do everything for them in the office, but never learn anything themselves. Like wtf do you mean I need to explain to someone who makes 3x my salary that yes, you need to login if you want to access your email that's a non-negotiable, how the fuck would that be a negotiable?

Like don't get me wrong I think it's good to hire people who may not be entirely qualified, or come from a different field. We need to give people chances, we need to give people room to learn. I just don't get how people who would genuinely want to learn and stay at a certain job/company for at least >1 year, get overlooked or rejected, but people like this get hired? I just genuinely don't get it.

And no, not everything is nepotism. Sometimes you just gotta get lucky. But even if you get lucky on getting the job, how are these people keeping it?

Been thinking about it for a while, and it's a controversial topic because I'm well aware how wrong it can be taken, and I feel like as if everyone who criticizes wfh is immediately thought of as a micromanager or a corporate bootlicker.

I understand the benefits of wfh. I think it's a free choice everyone should make and it shouldn't be seen as unprofessional to want to work remote.

But I think one of the biggest things for me is, I need a separate place for work. This might sound a little strong, but I don't work, something that arguably sucks, "contaminating" my room(basically, living in dorm rooms for adults, which might slightly affect my experience as well).

I often hear that the office can be overstimulating. And I get that. Maybe I've gotten lucky to have an office where it's not that bad. It's never super busy/crowded, and nobody bats an eye if you put on noise cancelling headphones and get to work. But at an office, or even a library or cafe, just any place that's not home, I actually feel less distracted and I can actually lock in on work more.

Ever since working from home got popular, I've only seen that argument mentioned once in an off-handed comment. But I wonder if anyone feels similar. Because honestly it feels weird because like... I don't want to "give into" whatever the corporate overlords want(tbh, it's more the real estate companies I think), but also like a separate place for work is really nice. Especially if your commute is short enough to do by bike, or have a longer distance but doable with a single line of public transit.

Edit: I feel like I should add that I work alternating shifts all week. I live in a place where only a few select places are open on weekends, but basically nothing is open at night(>8pm), but our work times for evening shifts are until 00:30. If I work in the daytime on a business day I can just go to the office. But it's the times where that's not an option, that bug me and makes alternating shifts ever slightly more miserable.

Had a customer come in today. Well, "come in", it's a chat/email inbox. Anyway, this customer wasn't happy with the way his order was left at his doorstep, and claimed several items were missing.

I asked him what was missing. He said(fake items), "cheese, milk, lettuce, and a few other items I wasn't able to include in my self-service refund request". However, the lettuce was clearly visible in the photo he sent earlier when complaining about his order being left at the door instead of handed over.

So I ask him both about the lettuce in the photo, and what the other items are specifically. Instead, we get stuck in a back in forth loop about how this is the worst customer service ever, we're accusing him of being a liar, etc.

I keep desperately trying to explain that we can't arrange a redelivery or refund if we don't know for which items we need to do that for.

His tauntings just keep getting worse instead of actually answering anything. I kinda give up and tell him "look, I'll arrange a refund for you, right now, but you do need to tell me for which items exactly we need to do that for". I'm not sure how it is at other places, but anything below <10 euros is an auto refund, depending on the customer even <20. Only >30 you have to report any claims made. And my boss gave as a "tip" with difficult customers, inform them that you'll be doing a refund, but only if they can tell/do xyz, which usually helps.

Anyway, he retracted his statement suddenly about more items missing that he wasn't able to report, and said that indeed only his cheese and milk were missing.

Even though my (very common) name and fake profile photo are probably on some pilot review or google review board by now, I'm just glad that that is over. But also wtf was that about. Like if you're going to claim something is missing, even if you're trying to scam a company for some reason, at least have an idea of what you're going to claim as missing, instead of just saying "some items are missing".

This might be just my unique experience, and I may have just gotten lucky with a good manager, but holy fuck our senior team members boil my blood sometimes. Actually, almost every shift I work with them.

I work customer service, and our team consists mostly of regular agents, and some "senior agents", who do the exact same work as we do but gained a special title due to experience and some minor responsibilities not too relevant here.

And I don't know how, or why, but whenever a case gets escalated to them, it always ends up worse than if I had tried to wing it myself, or just waited a day and escalated it to a manager instead.

Like I'm talking complex cases, bugs that can't be easily reproduced and/or you're seeing for the first time, or contacts that require help from other departments such as our legal team, HR, finance, etc. And somehow, when they get those contacts directly, it goes alright. When they get forwarded, for example through escalation, or because you're on break/done for the day, it gets completely messed up.

Like you sit there for a considerable amount of time, gathering as much info as possible, troubleshooting, making sure you've tried everything possible before escalating. And the senior agent's answer to the customer? "just update the app" and close the ticket, despite the app version being confirmed with the customer long ago, confirmed it wasn't that, and there was an active investigation with our finance team as to why this customer's bills kept bouncing back and it was threatening to get sent to collections because she physically couldn't pay, despite multiple attempts.

So now you got both a customer who's issue wasn't resolved and will never trust anything our support team says every again, and you just wasted a good chunk of your working day and effort towards resolving this only for a senior to step in, convinced that because they have the senior title they're a better agent, and give the most dumbfounded answer you can imagine. Like at that point just say nothing instead and let the ticket sit.

I've raised this multiple times with managers and the colleagues themselves, but I either just gets shrugs or "well that's just my work style". And then managers get angry when you'd rather let tickets sit for a while, and a more trustworthy colleague comes along to escalate it to. Yeah I don't like it either if we have to wait a bit longer but I'd rather get an actually sound answer the customer can use too rather than satisfying someone who can finally exercise their additional responsibilities only to completely flunk it and create a customer who will never trust us again and possibly lose that customer entirely.