20190411.0430

As I was looking at my LinkedIN feed recently, I saw an advertisement for a course in dealing with angry customers. It is no surprise to me that I would see an advertisement on the platform, nor yet is it a shock to see the ad be for its own product; I advertise my work on platforms I maintain, and I am not quite a profit-driven as many others are. It is also not a surprise to see the course on offer; it is a commonplace in the business world to which LinkedIN is devoted that there will be angry customers and clients, and they have to be dealt with as often as they occur.
I have worked in traditional "customer service" industries: I worked in grocery stores and foodservice for longer than was good for me. (I do hold, though, that everybody ought to work such jobs who can; things would improve a fair bit, I think, for those who work them and for the rest of us.) I have also worked and am working jobs that are less "normally" customer service but that still have much of that work about them, although the situations differ. And while I've not taken the LinkedIN course on the matter, I somehow doubt that it addresses such occupations in detail, given the overall orientation of the platform.
Much of the work I have done has been in the classroom, as I have amply attested here and in other places. While the notion of students as customers has many, many problems--about which many, many people have written many, many words with many, many more degrees of skill than I could marshal in many, many years--there is a prevailing notion that students are consumers of education, that they are funding the institutions they purport to attend, and that those at the front of the classroom are therefore working in customer service positions. And even where such a notion has little traction, it is or ought to be the case that the student is regarded as being a partner in the educational effort--and partners deserve to have consideration shown to them. The power dynamic differs from the typical customer service situation in some regards; the instructor is not likely to be dismissed out of hand, although most instructors are contingent and therefore always under the threat of non-renewal. But an angry student in the classroom is likely to be disruptive to others in it, and sending the student out of the room is not as available an option as once was the case. So how to handle them is an open question.
The work I do most now has me in the front office of a substance use treatment center. Those who come to see me are often referred to us because of one form of legal trouble or another; few who come to us do so without such prompting, and being obliged to do a thing always makes it less pleasant. And there is this, too; I can reasonably expect to deal on a daily basis with people who are under the influence of one chemical or another, licit or otherwise. For some, the influence makes them less capable of handling refusal than might otherwise be the case; for some, there are other, less fortunate effects yet. While I do have some leeway to send them away--I do not have to tolerate abuse, and I will not, not anymore--and there is the threat of intervention from one authority or another to keep them behaving more or less well, such options are far from ideal (even if I have had to invoke them). How to handle such people is a question I continue to struggle with, as well.
I suppose there are no easy answers. That said, I would certainly welcome insights.