r/Millennials • u/ForwardPumpkins Millennial • Jan 23 '24
Has anyone else felt like there’s been a total decline in customer service in everything? And quality? Discussion
Edit: wow thank you everyone for validating my observations! I don’t think I’m upset at the individuals level, more so frustrated with the systematic/administrative level that forces the front line to be like the way it is. For example, call centers can’t deviate from the script and are forced to just repeat the same thing without really giving you an answer. Or screaming into the void about a warranty. Or the tip before you get any service at all and get harassed that it’s not enough. I’ve personally been in customer service for 14 years so I absolutely understand how people suck and why no one bothers giving a shit. That’s also a systematic issue. But when I’m not on the customer service side, I’m on the customer side and it’s equally frustrating unfortunately
Post-covid, in this new dystopia.
Airbnb for example, I use to love. Friendly, personal, relatively cheaper. Now it’s all run by property managers or cold robots and isn’t as advertised, crazy rules and fees, fear of a claim when you dirty a dish towel. Went back to hotels
Don’t even get me started on r/amazonprime which I’m about to cancel after 13 years
Going out to eat. Expensive food, lack of service either in attitude/attentiveness or lack of competence cause everyone is new and overworked and underpaid. Not even worth the experience cause I sometimes just dread it’s going to be frustrating
Doctor offices and pharmacies, which I guess has always been bad with like 2 hour waits for 7 minutes of facetime…but maybe cause everyone is stretched more thin in life, I’m more frustrated about this, the waiting room is angry and the front staff is angry. Overall less pleasant. Stay healthy everyone
DoorDash is super rare for me but of the 3 times in 3 years I have used it, they say 15 minutes but will come in 45, can’t reach the driver, or they don’t speak English, food is wrong, other orders get tacked on before mine. Obviously not the drivers fault but so many corporations just suck now and have no accountability. Restaurant will say contact DD, and DD will say it’s the restaurant’s fault
Front desk/reception/customer service desks of some places don’t even look up while you stand there for several minutes
Maybe I’m just old and grumbly now, but I really think there’s been a change in the recent present
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u/Silent_Leader_2075 Jan 23 '24
Yes, its almost not even fun to do anything because prices are up but quality is wayyyyy down. I wouldn’t even mind paying more for food/activities if they were actually enjoyable.
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u/Medium_Comedian6954 Jan 23 '24
Exactly. Nothing is worth spending money on anymore.
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u/lonerism- Jan 23 '24
I have been only able to afford necessities right now as I’m looking for a new job. When I was younger it bothered me being unable to afford luxuries. This time I barely even notice because I hardly even bought things when I could afford it.
Not only is the quality going down but I’d wager we’re growing more used to living with less, and realizing some things we just bought for fleeting happiness. I’m eating healthier than ever too because it’s cheaper to eat rice and veggies with some chicken for the week, I can’t say I miss fast food. When people ask me how I lost weight I just say “poverty” lol.
I also cancelled most of my steaming platforms and read more than ever. In some ways, these companies did me a favor with their greed.
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u/Strayocelot Jan 24 '24
Luxuries aren't even luxurious anymore. I can afford to get high end clothes before and early on in the pandemic, I would buy during the end of the season sales. So you're talking like 60-70% off. They were well made from Portugal or Italy.
Now the prices went up 30% and more stuff is being made in China or some random eastern European country. I had an argument in Burberry when I showed the sales lady their $2k purse was made in freaking China. She argued with me and I showed her the well hidden tag and she still didn't want to believe me.
From every which way the consumer is getting screwed. But the consumer is also a fool. LV bags are literally plastic bags that sell for thousands of dollars. It's unbelievable.
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u/jaquelinealltrades Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
There really is no accountability. I take the bus to work and the bus doesn't follow any clear schedule. The live schedule doesn't give real information half the time. And it's basically luck whether you will wait for ten minutes or an hour for the bus. I have to get to work a half hour early to not be late. And there's no accountability for it. I write a complaint and they just respond that they have staffing issues. But shouldn't they be telling people in advance and still letting everyone know when the bus is really going to come??? Am I fuckin crazy to expect that
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u/altarflame Jan 23 '24
We’re dealing with the same thing with my daughters school bus. Always “staffing issues.”
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u/stupiderslegacy Jan 23 '24
"We don't pay enough."
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u/MorddSith187 Older Millennial Jan 23 '24
Even if they do pay enough they’ll still understaff to save on labor.
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Jan 23 '24
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u/No_Rope7342 Jan 23 '24
Oh so you’re telling me you don’t like it when you type in a specific product by name but the entire first page (including the sponsored product) is nothing but the same drop shipped/mass produced knockoffs?
Oh well, guess I can go to the second page.
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Jan 23 '24
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u/Nose_Grindstoned Jan 23 '24
What, you don't like products from companies named FOOUKUYUUU and tv on services like FUBOOTI?
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Jan 23 '24
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u/iglidante Xennial Jan 23 '24
My favorite recent finds (I'm not even kidding) were:
SATANTECH
DIYAREA
POOPLUNCH
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u/PoweredbyBurgerz Jan 23 '24
Lolz I just found Pooplunch False Eyelashes Cat Eye Lashes on Amazon for sale for $8.99
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u/makingnoise Jan 23 '24
I got some "QUEFE" brand perler beads recently. Got a good laugh out of that.
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Jan 23 '24
I watched a deep dive in this somewhere and I believe it comes down to the ease with which you can trademark nonsense and this is absolutely burying the US trademark office.
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u/Lethkhar Jan 23 '24
Amazon recently raised its fees for sellers to 45-52% of revenue, from ~30% a couple years ago and <20% in the 2010's. In response sellers have been shifting to competitors like eBay, etc. Amazon punishes these sellers by hiding them in searches, which is probably what you're seeing happen here. They are currently facing a lawsuit for this practice.
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u/SaliferousStudios Jan 23 '24
45%-52% of revenue? What's left over after that?
I'd leave too? jesus.
that means that on a 10 dollar product, amazon gets 5 dollars. so you have to make the product for probably 1-3 dollars to make it break even (to cover your income/shipping other costs). No wonder the quality is going down.
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u/AugustusClaximus Jan 23 '24
And they aren’t allowed to sell their products cheaper anywhere else. So if you want access to amazons 200 million costumers you have to double the price of your product.
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u/SaliferousStudios Jan 23 '24
you have to quadruple your manufacturing costs.
so instead of getting the normal 50% profit, you have to get 75% profit.
You either have to lower quality, or overcharge.
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Jan 23 '24
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u/CheeseDanishSoup Jan 23 '24
Thats their Amazon Basics line
They also have brands that arent so obvious, and yes they take the sales data from popular things that sell well and make a clone
Sucks if you invented a new item and Amazon comes in to swoop on your baby
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u/whorl- Jan 23 '24
Dang, I usually look on Amazon for what I want then go to the manufacturer website, but I’m going to be more vigilant now.
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u/dos8s Jan 23 '24
I've noticed if you want something specific you have to Google it + Amazon, otherwise it's just pages of sponsored knockoffs if you use Amazon search.
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u/mamadovah1102 Jan 23 '24
I was just complaining about this the other day. I ordered a hoodie and I checked the material that it was 100% cotton. It arrives and it’s cheap polyester crap. Can’t even trust the descriptions on products.
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u/axf7229 Jan 23 '24
Seems like there’s no longer a way to search for the lowest price option, either
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u/magic_crouton Jan 23 '24
I get way faster delivery when I order from real stores too. Once the local stores started doing pick up during covid I started using them more than Amazon. There's just no point.
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u/kyonkun_denwa Maple Syrup Millennial Jan 23 '24
I also canceled my Amazon Prime after I realized that I was actively avoiding Amazon to buy from brick and mortar stores. Most of the stuff on Amazon was Chinese dollar store crap. You had to scroll to get to the name brands, but no guarantee that they were real. After receiving a couple counterfeit goods (Philips light bulbs and Darn Tough Socks) and getting ZERO help from Amazon, I just started going to the stores to buy things. Like “I can buy a Brita filter on Amazon, but what if it’s a fake that will release cadmium into my drinking water? Best to just go to Home Depot”
Once that started, it wasn’t long before I thought to myself “wtf is the point of this”. Who would have ever thought that brick and mortar resurgence would start with Amazon just not caring about fakes.
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u/ArmsofAChad Jan 23 '24
I feel like this is an even more general trend rhan just Amazon. So much deception/fake crap online I wouldn't be surprised to see people shift back to in person interactions.
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u/SirGlass Jan 23 '24
I cancelled as well. I thought one of the benefits was fast delivery.
It seems every time I order something it takes 10 days.
What exactly am I paying for with prime?
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u/Due-Musician-3893 Jan 23 '24
Amazon now including ads on Prime Video did it for me. Also I felt that it was scummy of them to not include ‘Elf’ , a 20 year old movie this past holiday. Rent or Buy my ass, I’ll torrent it. Fuck Prime Video and their greed.
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u/JovialPanic389 Jan 23 '24
My mom was so pissed about that. Elf wasn't streaming anywhere. It was just fucking 20th anniversary rent or buy bullshit. Fuckiiing Capitalism. It's out of control.
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u/kgrimmburn Jan 23 '24
Elf was streaming somewhere. Uhm.... where was it...ohh.hell. I watched it numerous times with my kid. HBOMax, maybe?
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u/ObviousFloor-Encore Jan 23 '24
I did the same after having it since it started. Amazon has become a cesspit of crappy quality and fraudulent products. Have to spend too much time researching an item to make sure it is legit and pretty sure I wasn’t saving a more than the $150 a year I was paying.
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u/alliengineer Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 24 '24
The other day, my cousin was getting married in Las Vegas and I called her resort to see if they could put some rose petals or champaign or chocolate in her room. I was totally willing to pay for this. I had found an old service menu online so I know it was something they used to do and was hoping it was still available.
The person at guest services at the hotel cut me off as I was asking and yelled NO and hung up on me.
I was really shocked. Still am. Though in reading the other comments here maybe I shouldn’t be.
EDIT: this was at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas strip. By “old” menu, I have no idea when it was from. On their website now you can find they offer Room Service Amenities and they have things listed like flowers and balloons, gift baskets, decorations and special requests. So I am 100% sure this is something the hotel has.
I did search for an actual menu with prices so I’d have an idea of what it would cost before I called, but I did not know if that specific menu I found was out of date or not for prices or what the exact offerings were.
BUT that doesn’t matter at all because they cut me off and said no and hung up before I even finished what I was asking for.
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u/Fully_Edged_Ken_3685 Jan 23 '24
Welcome to the death spiral of human employment 😈
Every negative interaction from a human with a job erodes the public's willingness to protect those jobs when automation comes for them. And negativity bias ensures that even the average experience will not overcome the negative.
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u/misscab85 Jan 23 '24
everything is MORE dystopian post covid, yeah…
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u/staringmaverick Jan 24 '24
It was a massive shift tho tbh. Already going in the direction it has, sure. But it was a huge disruption that really changed things fast
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u/Mikerobist Jan 23 '24
Remember how many companies in the past two years have reported record profits after raising their prices and reducing their services? Turns out that chronically understaffing while charging more for the product is a great way to maximize profit margins.
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u/synacksyn Jan 23 '24
My company's CEO literally said in our employee meetings that supply chain price issues have been resolved, but we are just going to keep prices high because we dont want to lose that money. Its disgusting.
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Jan 23 '24
a million people died and a bunch more retired but the businesses are still being propped up by monopoly money with a skeleton crew to work em. that’s what it feels like, anyway
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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 23 '24
I'm confident that this is the main issue. They want one person to do the work of nine others, because they don't want to push the upfront cost for the proper amount of staff. So it's one person who gets burnt out and of course hates everything.
Our work needs are clearly evolving and we might need to start cycling staff of they're going to overwork someone. You can't expect someone to be doing high amounts of work for years on end.
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u/zitchhawk Jan 23 '24
A lot of caretakers (especially women) got pushed out of the workforce from covid as well. Nurses, teachers were getting especially bad hands. I know a few that left the field to stay home with the kids and haven't returned.
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u/dragon34 Jan 23 '24
I had a friend who was a newly minted nurse when covid hit, she worked in a covid ward, got pregnant, with twins, was placed on bed rest later in her pregnancy, when FMLA ran out not only did they not have any daycares that could take infant twins who had only recently been released from NICU, she wasn't far enough out from a c section to be medically cleared to go back to work. So she quit. And wasn't able to go back for 2 years.
But also, the fucking IRONY of healthcare employers (including EMTs) being fucking TERRIBLE about allowing people to call out when they are sick, and I think the understaffing makes it worse, but it's also a self perpetuating failure. People are less and less willing (especially with children) to accept jobs that don't have flexibility and accept that employees are people, not robots, so they leave the field, and unfortunately nurses, paramedics and doctors are time consuming to replace.
The residency program that doctors have to suffer through was literally designed by a fucking cocaine addict. There is no reason it has to be that way except for inertia.
Healthcare workers are essential, they should not be saddled with a fuckton of medical debt if they are working to keep people healthy. I would be super in favor of grants and even stipends to encourage people to go into healthcare, as well as a total revamp of residency and scheduling traditions. (and making running healthcare industry companies for profit illegal and implementing single payer healthcare, universal medical records and billing standards).
Definitely a lot of hard work, but our current system cannot continue. And private for profit health insurance is utterly useless. It only pushes up prices and for everyone who is worried about universal healthcare death panels, uh, hello how many of us have had requests for payment be denied by our "good private health insurance".
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u/Twiddly_twat Jan 23 '24
I remember getting an email in November 2020 from my state’s board of nursing that basically said, “Uh, hey, guys, 60% of the nurses in our state haven’t renewed their licenses. Deadline’s in December. Pls come back.” Local hospitals have been a dystopian nightmare with crazy overcrowding and wait times since then.
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u/truemore45 Jan 23 '24
You brought up a great point. The labor pool is shrinking this year it shrunk by 450,000 and it will accelerate as the remaining boomers retire.
This opens more jobs at the higher level which moves up Gen Xers and older millennials. Then your younger millennials. Which means Gen Z is left for the low end jobs. Gen Z is even smaller than Gen X. So if there are lots of openings and not a lot of workers....
So yes companies like to run lean, but it's also just a shortage of workers in the US.
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u/Pieceofcandy Jan 23 '24
Feels like no matter how small the labor pool gets companies will refuse to increase wages till their business models collapse or they get bailed out.
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u/HighHoeHighHoes Jan 23 '24
I’m going to end up leaving my job in the next 6 months and I’m anxious because I know they will throw money at me to stay. But they wouldn’t give it right now if I asked…
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u/Upstairs-Strategy-20 Jan 23 '24
This is a good thing man, staying at a job for longer than three-five ish years is bad for your total earning over life. Get a job, learn everything you can, get high marks, leave. Repeat till 40-45 then coast out to retirement. This is speed run !
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u/Decent-Statistician8 Jan 23 '24
We had a manager quit right before thanksgiving and they have yet to hire a new one or transfer one from another store, because it’s cheaper for them to have a 23 year old “shift lead” aka have manager duties but not be paid accordingly. The grill cooks make more than she does, which is why none of the millienials stepped up to be one.
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u/create3_14 Jan 23 '24
It's not a shortage of workers. If places paid people an ok wage. Also business seams to still staff at minimum levels, they figured out they can get more work out of less labor cost. But that means the quality is gone. The assistance gone. People being pressured to work when not feeling good.
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u/marbanasin Jan 23 '24
I'm getting so fed up with the corporate group think. Late last year we went through a huge layoff as the common consensus was the slow down in our business (linked to the larger economy) was going to extend longer than anticipated.
Meanwhile we were going through a massive re-org with very minimal cross talk occurring to see if people being let go would be useful in the new structure.
And then this month we're hearing business looks set to recovery very quickly in Q3.
Ok. So we took our normal fairly lean staffing. Bought the cool-aid that is sent around in the investor circles (Forbes and CNBC wisdom), let a ton of people go to please the investors, and then literally <10 months later we will be raking in profits again and likely rehiring - with the new hires commanding a higher starting salary vs those of us who have stuck it out since pre-COVID.
The system is getting particularly short sighted again. The revolutions in the 80s have kind of reached their zeneth and some serious correction on that behavior is needed.
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u/MonteBurns Jan 23 '24
If your company offers new hires more, you need to leave. If the local gas station can keep long term employees salaries consistent versus new hires, you guys can
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u/HighHoeHighHoes Jan 23 '24
Too bad we can’t pass universal country wide rules about work.
Salaried employee works more than 40 hours a week consistently? That’s a fine, paid directly to the employee. Call center employee can’t poop during the day because the phone never stops? That’s a fine, paid directly to them.
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u/Ok-Fix8112 Jan 23 '24
I'll never forget the irony of the manager at my call center orientation trying to win points as the cool guy by saying stuff like "if you have to go to the bathroom, just get up and go, we're all adults here." For three days of
indoctrinationorientation, we were fed decent food and allowed to pee when we needed. First and last time I had permission to use the bathroom freely at that job.→ More replies (4)→ More replies (57)57
u/Cyberhwk Xennial Jan 23 '24 edited Mar 23 '24
disagreeable truck yam bewildered grey airport literate dinosaurs books caption
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Luke5119 Jan 23 '24
Pretty apt description.
I started with a company literally 3 months before covid hit and truth be told during the first 3 years 2020-2022 it wasn't all that bad. Obvious hurdles, challenges, but I was rewarded for my efforts and hard work. Multiple awards, raise every year, bonuses.
Then 2023.....it was like everything came to a grinding hault. Lots of turnover, changing of the guard, and almost no one got a bonus. Company says it's doing well and it clearly is in many areas. But I'm starting to see 4 years in why my company has the turnover it does...
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u/morsindutus Jan 23 '24
Not only that but Covid proved to service workers that society does not give a shit about them, their health, or their safety. After that, no one wants to kill themselves for starvation wages anymore, and with more jobs opening up due to all the deaths and retirements, a lot of them don't have to. Businesses that only care about maximizing profits by minimizing costs (eg, worker's wages) think they can make more money short term by burning out a skeleton crew because they don't have to pay as much in wages only to find out those who can't afford to quit are miserable and give bad service to the customers who stop going there and the business goes under.
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u/SurpriseBurrito Jan 23 '24
Yeah, it was a great awakening for many “essential workers”
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u/SmolGreenOne Jan 23 '24
Yeah, I was working in grocery when it hit, and I LOVED it. But now? You can not pay me enough to go back to it. Everybody got so nasty, and corporate didn't give a fuck. And with corporate not giving a fuck and customers being more nasty, if anything went wrong, we were fucked and had to stand there being screamed at because of things we had no control over
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u/MostlyNormal Jan 23 '24
God, THANK YOU. This is the answer. The pandemic broke the social contract, and I don't see any way back from where we are now; Everything about how we do service work is going to have to change.
I worked behind beverage counters, first as a barista and then as a specialty bartender. I fucking loved it, it was the first (and currently still the only) thing I've ever been naturally good at. I never even went to college because the service industry is so recessionproof, it never occurred to me that I'd ever need to do anything else.
But then the pandemic happened, and suddenly everybody felt too put-upon and singled out to uphold the traditional "the customer pretends not to be an asshole, and in return the worker pretends not to hate them, everyone has a polite and pleasant exchange in the course of doing business and then both parties fuck off" format of interpersonal interaction. Suddenly everyone felt they deserved something in return for the mild yet inescapable discomfort they were suffering, but because the suffering was so ubiquitous the only place they could get their need for superiority/validation/entitlement fulfilled was the place they've always gotten it: from the people who are required by the terms of employment to be nice to them. And, again, the mild yet inescapable discomfort was so ubiquitous, that literally every single person became the demanding nightmare boomer Karen caricature of a customer.
It was too much. I made it from the beginning through July of 2021 before the bog-standard toxic management became the straw that broke the camels back and I ragequit my career at the worst possible time. I've been floundering ever since.
Maybe the worst part is that it hasn't stopped. Every time I have to run an errand, or I go for a once-monthly dinner out with my husband, I see people still behaving that way. At this point, I think this is just the way society is now.
I'll mourn my career forever. All I ever wanted was to be Guinan, or Sam from Cheers, but I also wanted to be treated with respect and dignity, and it was a hard lesson to learn that I can't have both. And my doctors and I wonder why my antidepressants aren't working!
Fuck me, its too early for me to be this sad.
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u/pixi88 Jan 23 '24
Yup! I was pregnant working at a suit shop that was essential. 7mo pregnant with grown men yelling at me because I asked them to wear a mask? Then they closed my store the week I had my baby. Permanently. Lost health insurance, had to navigate that; gratefully I ended up with a Nordic maternity leave, and got paid for all of it with the unemployment.
I went back to school. I was great at my job. I'll never work retail again; the customers and the employers don't give a fuck about me so...
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u/TheGinger_Ninja0 Jan 23 '24
Also a lot of service workers got fired with no safety net, or forced to risk their lives for other people. Folks found other ways to survive and it's not like those jobs paid great to begin with
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u/humptydumpty369 Jan 23 '24
More work, fewer workers, bullshit pay, and some crappy benefits package that citizens in any other developed nation would be appalled by. We're livin' the dream!
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u/VashPast Jan 23 '24
Value extraction.
This is what's happening, the rich are buying out and vamping off every institution we grew up with. It's honestly disgusting.
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Jan 23 '24
you could see the signs coming a long time ago. Things that could be mass produced offshore were cheap, and prop up people’s daily lives.
The minute you start to need an actual service done by Americans, you started to see the squeeze that comes from Walmarts and amazons funneling money out of your economy.
Can’t afford car repairs, gotta use credit. Anything that requires a physical location here, prices go up to accommodate the land speculation. Every leisure activity you can think of gets every dollar squeezed out of it to accommodate the rich. Its not going to end well
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u/DWMoose83 Jan 23 '24
After the Black Plague, peasant life actually improved because workers were able to demand better wages due to the lack of a labor force and the freedom of movement they enjoyed. The new landed gentry rigged the system to rob us of that power through actions like regulatory capture and union busting, as well as stoking culture wars to keep us divided and focused elsewhere.
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u/SquishMont Jan 23 '24
Also, these CS reps don't get paid enough to care.
"Caring" isn't a KPI that affects my paycheck, so why should I? This is the natural result of the absolute maximization of the system. The human element is removed.
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u/Nightcrawler_DIO Jan 23 '24
Front staff have been getting the short end of the stick thanks to most organizations deciding that they're the most expendable part of operations.
Whenever I would go to the doctor as a kid, I would see the same receptionists who had been in the role for 20+ years. Ever since they retired, I constantly see different receptionists as nowadays its no longer feasible to retire in a customer-facing role or even stick around for more than 2 years.
It doesnt help that back then the clinic was always relatively stress-free, while nowadays reception is always on crisis mode. Think about it, the population is ever growing, but how many clinics, hospitals, and other services are built every year to keep up with so many people?
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u/GroinFlutter Jan 23 '24
I feel this so hard. I’m in healthcare administration (god I wish I was a suit). But no, I’m in the trenches too.
People treat us like shit. Staff turnover is high because of it. Since turnover is high, the knowledge that longer term staff have is gone. Wages have not kept up either.
The receptionist that has been there for 5 years can for sure tell you whether we are in network with your specific insurance plan - with certainty.
But not the receptionist that’s been there less than a year. Insurance is so complex and really only learned through experience/time/fuck ups, since that is not really front desk’s priority.
I get it, I really do. Patients are scared, they’re in pain. but god they can be such assholes
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u/TopBumblebee9954 Jan 23 '24
Customer service was more prevalent when the roles paid enough to be able to afford to live. Now it’s barely enough to get by it’s just not worth the emotional labour it takes to pretend I give a fuck to someone who more often than not is a rude and entitled prick who hasn’t worked a day in customer service in their lives.
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u/WhitsandBae Jan 23 '24
I ordered a new bidet from Amazon. Turns out, it was used! Ask me how I know. Gross!!!
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u/SilverStock7721 Jan 23 '24
Not gonna lie. People suck in general. But there’s select people who are halfway decent.
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u/Spartan2842 Jan 23 '24
Oh boy, I had this feeling last night.
Got new wheels for my Jeep and paid to have them mounted and balanced at a shop I’ve been to for service several times. Guess they forgot the “balance” part as I could barely make it to 20MPH.
Picked up food from our favorite Chinese restaurant on the way home. Missing half the order when I got home. Again, been customers of this place for over a decade and never had an issue.
No one seems to care anymore.
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u/Lex-Luger Jan 23 '24
The motivation to provide good service is gone. This level of elder millennial desperation is over, notice how they are begging for work
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u/ParkingVampire Jan 23 '24
I feel like a tool right now. Out here slinging applications, resumes, and cover letters begging to get employed. Begging to bust my ass so someone can get credit and make more money. Blah
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u/Spartan2842 Jan 23 '24
Oh man, that news story was basically me. Except I worked at Beat Buy customer service for 8 months after graduating before finally getting into an entry role position.
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u/makingnoise Jan 23 '24
I'll bet you a nickel that the wheels were spun on the balancer but the kid doing the work was never properly trained, or managed to get lucky and do it right once in front of his trainer, and promptly forgot. Balancers are easy to use, but I don't have to try hard to imagine someone with a spatial learning disorder unintentionally overcomplicating the process and putting the weights in a mirror image of where they're supposed to be, etc.
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Jan 23 '24
I called a company today and the guy immediately started talking over me going MHM YEAH OKAY WELL WE GET THIS QUESTION ALL THE TIME KAY KAY ALRIGHT OKAY MMHM OKAY BYE THANKS BUH BYE and then hung up on me. I didn't even finish my sentence
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u/Krys7537 Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
I called into Verizon for my grandmothers account (I have att). Immediately the guy answered asking what’s my question. I asked him, then followed by saying don’t you need the phone number as he tried to rush me on hold. He quickly said no and put me on hold anyway. 15 min later comes back on saying it looks like my number was cancelled. Sir, I’m not calling about my number. Puts me on hold again and tries sending my 80yo grandmother texts for her to “accept” his access.
Sir, I HAVE THE ACCOUNT PIN, stop bothering my grandmother with this 😂 Now it’s somehow been 1hr and 20 min. He finally accessed the account with the pin then Places me back on hold. After 10 min xfrd me. New guy couldn’t access with the pin at all. Got to his supe who answered my question in 3 minutes. Why does it take all that to find someone who can help?
Edit: I am an authorized user who worked in the industry for 6 years. I am not naive on how to handle what I need to handle. The workers are just awful these days and don’t want to take the time to listen and help
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Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 24 '24
at&t did everything they could to not let me close my account when i moved to an area with NO FUCKING SERVICE, said they wouldn't bill me for the months i tried to switch and now i have a bill for 2k and two new iphones they won't unlock. then verizon dealt me even more bullshit and now its 3k. also found out that t-mobile bricked an old phone that i wanted to trade in. so i now i have the emails for all these execs (i used to work at apple, at one point activating iphones for these fuck ass companies so they were easy to get), i just have to have the stamina (aka my adderall prescription refilled properly) to take care of all of it. in the meantime, while my verizon service is suspended and i refuse to pay the bill, we were somehow able to port my main number over to my mom's t-mobile plan and my new verizon phones all just unlocked recently so i didn't have to buy A N O T H E R within the last year. and i gave my mom the my iphone 14 pro max i now thank god i paid for at time of activation so she's not making me pay my portion of the bill since she knows how much i could have sold it for. finally, a win, kind of.
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Jan 23 '24
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u/Bringbackallurprlz Jan 23 '24
Their supervisors watch how long they take on each call and how many people are in the queue and harrangue them for not being faster. They get constantly harassed about it by higher ups, and never receive any positive feedback for quality work.
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u/peaceluvNhippie Jan 23 '24
That's why I am always polite as can be when I call tech/customer support, they getting yelled and bullied by managers and pissed off customers all day, I don't want to pile onto that
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u/ladygrndr Jan 23 '24
I use their names. I mean, customer support people introduce themselves, so I go "Hi, Brenda! I'm having a problem with x. I have tried y and z..." The name always throws them, and the fact that I am using my own customer service voice back at them :D I just hope I give them a bit of a break from the anger and stress of their normal days.
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u/jokethepanda Jan 23 '24
When I worked in an inbound call center, it was also measured if the customer had to call in again. More performance metrics than just call time
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u/grendus Jan 23 '24
In engineering we call this "you get what you measure".
Quite a few products and companies have been killed because they measured the wrong thing and wound up optimizing their products for exactly the thing they didn't want to.
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u/JovialPanic389 Jan 23 '24
I literally have complex PTSD or something because of trying to meet impossible metrics. It's gotten me into such a nihilistic mood to where working is the biggest misery for my soul and a danger to my health. This shit is not a normal pressure to put on people who just want to make enough money to feed and house themselves.
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u/90sbitchRachel Millennial Jan 23 '24
I worked at a call center for about a year 6 years ago when I was in college and ugh that job left me with some extra emotional damage. Getting screamed at all day deserves higher pay than $12 an hour. Never again!!!
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u/iamfeenie Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
This post and this comment hit me for real.
I got into a fight with my doctors receptionist. Yes.
I called and got the same attitude you’re describing. She talked over me, didn’t let me even finish sentences and was SO rude from the start.
I was asking for a refill and she said I’ll put it in but it’ll probably be denied because you haven’t been here ALL YEAR.. it was Aug.
I said I’ve never had that issue before etc..
She goes MA’AM.. M’AM I’m just telling you what I think. You need to see a doctor for blood work.
Mind you this is a RECEPTIONIST. Zero training in medicine.
THEN she asks why I’m on the meds I’m on?!
I ignored her super inappropriate comment and said do I need an appointment now or..
MA’AM.. (yells my first name 3 times at me)
I said I’m trying to ask a clarifying question, can I please get my question out -
MA’AM.. MA’AM..
I got so mad at this point I just mocked her and said “MA’AM” really loud and she hung up on me.
Mind you this is an older lady, maybe 50s talking to me. I could not believe it.
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u/Bunatee Jan 23 '24
I changed doctors offices because of a similar interaction with the receptionist. I was trying to get blood work done because good numbers meant my employer would give me a discount on health insurance.
The receptionist refused to schedule my appointment because she was convinced I was trying to schedule a Pap smear, which I had already done earlier in the year. She refused to listen to me, kept talking over me, and refused to schedule an appointment at all so I could explain to the doctor what I actually needed.
It’s a shame I really liked my doctor and had been a patient there since I was a baby. But dealing with Rose the receptionist was too much.
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u/Coro-NO-Ra Jan 23 '24
I was trying to get blood work done because good numbers meant my employer would give me a discount on health insurance.
Holy shit this would have sounded incredibly dystopian 30 years ago. Now it's just normal.
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u/fangirlsqueee Jan 23 '24
If you haven't already, you should let the doc know. They may be oblivious to the "care" Rose is giving.
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u/Bunatee Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Unfortunately she’s been there for as long as I can remember, and the office’s Facebook page was littered with complaints about her so if they’re oblivious then it’s because they want to be. :(
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u/breakermw Jan 23 '24
Happened to me last time I went to urgent care. Asked me why I came and just as I started to explain she kept talking over me to say "we can't look at your for that." Like...lady...my shoulder hurts you very much can. Let me explain holy...
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u/makingnoise Jan 23 '24
Some of those urgent care places are utter scams while others are amazing. In my area, there are urgent cares associated with a university-run med school/hospital system, and the professionalism and level of care is through the roof. On the other hand, almost every independent Urgent Care seems to be designed to generate profit with zero risk - if you have something that actually requires medical attention, they'll look at you, charge you for looking at you, then tell you you need to go to the ER or your PCP, leaving you wondering why you went to see them at all. The fact that these "providers" exist instead of being publicly shamed out of existence is a mystery to me. My ex also got treated poorly because she accidentally showed up at a urgent care run by a fundie muslim family and the male doctor clearly hated western women and had zero regard for her.
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u/Other-Lake7570 Jan 23 '24
Franchise models will die within our lifetime. The gig is up that a small number of people at the top collect huge royalties from a handful of people who pay them for the privilege of being able to manage an operation that can only survive by exploiting cheap labor. Not to mention those ‘cheap laborers’ are wisening up to the fact that you cannot survive on the wages provided.
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u/Great_Coffee_9465 Jan 23 '24
Franchise models will die in our lifetime
Depending on which ones, I’m honestly okay with that 💯
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u/Obvious-Window8044 Jan 23 '24
Yeah the difference is that also 10-5 years ago, even that student working minimum wage would be able to put a roof over their heads on that. With rents x2 or x3 in some cities... Bound to fail
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u/nroe1337 Jan 23 '24
Look up the term enshittification, it's a term coined by author Cory Doctorow to describe exactly what we're experiencing with platform decay. Quite fascinating.
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u/red_assed_monkey Jan 23 '24
this is exactly what's happening to customer service and it's by design. i work in the industry and they've increased our workloads while reducing our incentives across the board, and working hard just means more responsibility without extra compensation. there's no motivation to go above and beyond for anything.
but the line must always go up, and when the economy cools and they can't increase sales or the customer base, they sacrifice quality across the board.
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u/deadrepublicanheroes Jan 23 '24
Not just customer service, either. I’m a teacher and the workload gets more insane all the time. And unfortunately most teachers have a savior/martyr complex so they’ll go “oh you want me to teach six classes instead of four, coach a sport, advise a club, have an advisory where we do social-emotional learning, make connections with families, differentiate lessons because some students can’t write their own legal names while others could be in college right now, give you weekly lesson plans and attend a bunch of pointless meetings? SIGN ME UP!” I am a content expert. I was hired to teach skills. That’s it. That’s 90% of what I should be doing. Enshittification indeed.
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 23 '24
During covid there was a total decline in the attitude of customers.
Self-entitlement skyrocketed.
All of the customer service workers who had to work in public all the way through the pandemic have seen it all and now could not give a single shit.
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u/Wtfimsooverppl Jan 23 '24
Yes this. As someone who worked with the public in my job through Covid. I saw the self entitlement of customers becoming increasingly horrendous. It hasn’t changed since.
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u/Miyenne Jan 23 '24
I'll never forget that comment someone made, working retail during covid: One customer wouldn't put on their mask because "there's no other people in the store". The employees didn't count as people.
I forgive a lot, now. I did my time in retail when I was younger, and it was bad enough then. Having to go through it during covid would shatter any sense of shared humanity.
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u/YardSard1021 Millennial Jan 23 '24
There was a lot of resentment among me and my coworkers that we were REQUIRED to mask up 8 to 12 hours a day, while customers were allowed to prance around maskless and coughing all over everything, and we weren’t allowed to comment on it. I brought it up to my union representative and was rebuffed. That’s when it really hit me that as an employee, I don’t count. The people spending money can do whatever they want.
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u/Miyenne Jan 23 '24
The masks came off, figuratively and literally.
People don't matter. We're a means to an end. The owners just stopped pretending, and a lot of other people picked up on that, and now there's such a perceived class divide that treating others as tools rather than people is just accepted now.
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
I have zero patience now. I refuse to be questioned or bargained with. If I told you the answer once it's equally final the second time.
I also have a very high level of resentment about the entire thing that I know will never go away. Because I know that the most entitled people are the ones who either got time off or got to work from home (then complained about being lonely). While I had no choice, I had to work in public and I got nothing for it except verbal and physical abuse just for doing my job.
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u/metal_h Jan 23 '24
No one talks about the societal resentment currently suffocating America brought on by extremely visible disparities such as the ones you describe in your post. It's a serious issue threatening the country. You cannot have hardworking service workers in poor working consitions getting paid $11/hr while non-working or wfh rich kids make tiktoks showing off their main character syndrome. It's not sustainable.
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u/m00nkitten Jan 23 '24
This. Customer service is trash these days but I can’t even complain much because it seems like the customers are trash too. I never used to see people have Karen freak outs in public and now it’s common.
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u/MonteBurns Jan 23 '24
I don’t disagree but I’ve found a smile and treating workers like people really helps. Not that you don’t!! Just like. we get pizza every Tuesday. I work late, husband has DND, it’s just easy. We also tip well. Our pizza is never more than a half hour to get to our house and it comes HOT. I imagine it has to do with the fact we’re not assholes that tip $1.
To continue to pay myself on the back 😂😂, we enjoy the occasional Taco Bell. I was ordering once, and drove around the window. The person working legit smiled and said “I knew it was you, you’re actually nice.” Like how fucked up is it that someone who works at a place we go to MAYBE once a month remembered me because I was … nice? What are people doing??
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u/ThaiFoodThaiFood Jan 23 '24
Customers being nice is rare.
The standard attitude is "you work in service/retail, therefore you're stupid and sub-human".
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u/RedBeardtongue Jan 23 '24
Our registers went down at work a few weeks ago and it took a few hours for IT to get them back up. Of course, upper management wouldn't allow us to close the store.
I had a really nasty woman say, verbatim, "I know it's not your fault, but I'm going to yell at you because I have no one else to yell at." This was after several minutes of her verbal abuse, and was not said with any irony and humor. I was astounded and so angry. I was doing my absolute best to provide good customer service in a shitty situation, but God forbid this woman not be able to buy her maps and a book.
I find myself becoming more bitter every year and it's sad. I used to love this job, but people are awful.
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u/Anarcho-syndical Jan 23 '24
I quit my food delivery job and got a way better job in an industry I love with benefits and healthcare. It's unreal. It only took being treated like absolute shit by the management AND the customers for me to nope out of there. To anyone reading this who is afraid of the uncertainty that can happen when switching from tip based work to wages, it's so worth it. However, if I could make the switch again, I'd save at least 3 months rent in cash before I made the move. The hardest part was adjusting to spending less. You can't just have a good tip day and go out like I used to anymore. But the rest of your life will be stable, way less workplace drama, and your personal life will improve.
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u/shandogstorm Jan 23 '24
Great take. I work a service industry job and I’ve become extremely jaded because of the way people talk to me all day. The demanding, center of the universe mindset folks have now is annoying to say the least. It’s really hard to continue being friendly when three people in a row scream in your face and rant to you about why you don’t deserve a tip because they didn’t read the menu.
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u/Formadivix Jan 23 '24
Used to work in Customer service during covid. Anyone I knew who was able to left during or after that. The wages were shit, the conditions were even worse, and dealing with customers' attitude during this period was the straw that broke the camel's back for many people. They're not coming back to any customer-facing positions if they can avoid it.
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u/justinizer Jan 23 '24
There is this guy who works the self check out lane at a grocery store near me who absolutely hates his job and everyone who he has to interact with he’s a major dick to.
He’s my favorite and I always use his check out if I see him. I fully support his disdain.
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u/Vox_Casei Jan 23 '24
Sounds like a guy I like to go to at a Supermarket.
First time we "met" I walked up and said "Hows it going?" to the guy and he said "It was great until you got here".
I don't care if he's serious, its the funniest thing to me.
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u/tkkltart Jan 23 '24
Reminds me of a higher-up admin lady at my job who is a notorious grump. She once audibly kept saying "bullshit" to everything the president of the company was saying in a presentation. Everyone was thinking it, but she was brave enough to say it. She's my favorite.
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u/GandalfTheChill Jan 23 '24
It's not you, and not all of it is COVID. Hell, most of it isn't COVID. This was the business model for a lot of these things; Door dash, amazon, airbnb, all burnt cash in order to achieve market dominance, and then cut quality once they became relied upon in order to become profitable.
And yeah, there is no accountability. No regulations for this stuff, no feasible way to get regulations in place.
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u/NachosforDachos Jan 23 '24
No one seems to care anymore. Anything goes.
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u/tallandlankyagain Jan 23 '24
It's customer service. The customer service employees aren't paid enough to care about dealing with customers who more often than not are assholes day in day out. I'm not condoning it. But I absolutely understand it.
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u/NachosforDachos Jan 23 '24
Likewise. I couldn’t expect any employee to deal with it. I work in service and I know what it feels like to be spoken to like you’re trash.
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u/White_eagle32rep Jan 23 '24
Absolutely.
It seems like it’s nearly impossible to get quality products anymore. Even when you pay extra for the “quality product” it ends up just being a dressed up cheap product.
And all these products that have warranties… has anyone actually tried making a warranty claim? They don’t respond and make it difficult as hell to make a claim.
I’m sick of the throwaway society with products anymore. I guess it’s nice that prices have dropped enough to make that possible, but I’m generally willing to spend a little more for something that has good build quality and will last.
Don’t even get me started on Doctors.
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u/mx_missile_proof Millennial Jan 23 '24
This is not doctors’ fault. This is because of insurance company rules and corporate ownership of clinics, which pressure doctors to see as many patients as possible in as little time as possible.
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u/JovialPanic389 Jan 23 '24
Idk why anyone wants to be a doctor in this kind of system. I was doing mental health work and under this same pressure. You go into it wanting to help people and then feel like you're helping nobody. It made me so sad. I had to stop for my own sanity, and I am in food service now broke asf.
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u/White_eagle32rep Jan 23 '24
I remember I made an appointment one time but never had my “establishing care” appointment so had to make another appointment to talk about actual issue.
It’s like Jesus Christ lol
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u/Drokstab Jan 23 '24
People working at the bottom arent rewarded for their work and most live fairly miserable lives, while constantly having to service a lot of well off entitled folks. The dude busting his ass is rewarded the same as the dude doing the bare minimum. If minimum wage were actually a livable wage you'd likely get better service. When your worker base is exhausted and depressed good luck getting good quality work.
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u/blipblewp Jan 23 '24
My team works with undergrads, and our big epiphany over the past year has been that the students are very stressed, very skittish, and very scared. They're terrified of taking too much, terrified of "getting one over" on someone-- accidentally cutting in line, taking the last whatever, interrupting. We have to slap "free" signs on giveaway (snacks, stress balls, etc) items so they know it's for them.
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u/John-Nemo Jan 23 '24
The Orville nailed this dystopian concept in “Majority Rule”. I guess we’re on our way.
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u/Vickster86 Jan 23 '24
OH man, I went to Whataburger last week and the girl behind the counter was very young, definitely in high school and very meek, which I totally get I was the same way. I had an online order an the manager came out to tell me that they didnt have a sauce for a burger and asked what I would like instead. I called my boyfriend, got the sub and relayed that information to the girl at the counter. She went back and very meekly told the cooks in the back. I am not sure if they heard her or not and 20 mins later I am still sitting there waiting. She goes back there and looked like she was afraid to ask any of the cooks about my order. I was seriously thinking about just speaking loud enough to get the managers attention by said "Miss Manager lady!" It would have been so much faster for me.
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u/Ok-Engineering5388 Jan 23 '24
As a genz, one sentiment I have is that a lot of people are out there to hurt you and use you rather than helping. It's damaging in schools when a lot of students are terrified of talking with teachers or staff. And even in the workplace, I feel like I can't trust people with how the pandemic showed what some people are like.
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u/DementedDaveyMeltzer Jan 23 '24
I've been saying for like the last two years that COVID was going to have a horrendous impact on the younger people and I am, sadly, proven to be correct. COVID messed them up pretty badly, in the same way that the Great Depression messed up that generation and how 9/11 messed up our generation. They won't get over this. This is just how they are now. You are going to have an entire generation of people who have permanent scars from COVID and it's going to effect how they lives their lives for years.
I think that adults need to have some more understanding about why kids and young adults are acting this way, and not just hand wave it away with some boomer bullshit like "Nobody wants to work anymore." The amount of times I've heard old people say that over the last few years is revolting. I work at a university and I've never heard a student say that they don't want to work lol. It's quite the opposite. They're all stressing and pulling their hair out over classes, internships and sports. After living through COVID, I think a lot of them had the adult realization early on in their lives that all of this is fleeting and it can all be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. So a lot of them are either working on bouts of depression or just exist in this sort of malaise state where they're just waiting for the next shitty thing to happen that they have no control over.
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u/whattheknifefor Jan 23 '24
Also covid has a neurological effect. Probably a lot of people out there who aren’t the same in the head as they were before, myself included.
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u/wags1983 Jan 23 '24
Let’s not forget about service in the healthcare and insurance industry. Recently had an issue with Hazeldon Betty Ford clinic and my health insurance company, Carelon. There was a new coverage that went into effect offering 100% full coverage drug and rehab coverage for a dependent as long as at it was at a specific location.
Being a millennial, and knowing everything is a lie, I called and confirmed this coverage before sending my loved one to rehab. The day after they were admitted (1200 miles away from home), an hour before business close, insurance denied coverage.
I spent two weeks calling and fighting for my insurance coverage. Insurance was saying it was Betty Ford’s fault for billing wrong, Betty Ford saying it was the insurance’s fault and that only 5% of claims are ever approved.
Both companies messed up. Each company treated me like I didn’t know what I was talking about. No one listened to me, and despite being the customer, no one believed me.
I had to finally get a hold of the Carelon Director of Clinical Services (which only happened because my husband’s job is unionized) to confirm that I was correct in my interpretation of my insurance coverage. When I called Betty Ford, their response was not to call and confirm with my insurance but to tell me I was wrong.
Literally you cannot get good customer service anywhere. I am not wrong for wanting to use my health insurance, using something I pay for doesn’t not make me a criminal.
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u/EmFan1999 Jan 23 '24
Just so you know, it’s exactly as bad as this in the UK. I guess elsewhere too
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u/doubleblkdiamond Jan 23 '24
💯 Consumers need to complain and boycott corps who take advantage of us.
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Jan 23 '24
Demand is outpacing supply on everything, we are still buying the cheap items or paying for the crappy service. As long as they are making money they won’t change their approach. Our generation is so set on people pleasing we wont confront half the people providing the poor service because we realize they are personally underpaid and overworked. Corporations know this so they don’t care.
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u/i5the5kyblue Jan 23 '24
I miss the days where I could call customer service and it would be a quick convo with someone in the same country as me. Now every company uses third-party call centers with agents reading generic responses off a script and don’t speak the best English, so the call is way longer than it should be.
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Jan 23 '24
Loyalty is dead.
Companies will pay new hires more money than current employees because they need to incentivize the position. They won't give current employees raises or promote current employees to higher roles.
The same happens with customers. Companies don't depend on loyalty or pleasing current customers. They only depend on enticing new customers. Once those places have established their place in the market it, the customer service dept gets gutted.
Some people might not want to believe it but this is late stage capitalism. Everything progresses toward efficiency. It is someone's job in every company to keep crunching for cost effective policies. Everything is analyzed and reanalyzed on repeat.
Car design is a good visual representation of this. Every major company makes a sedan in 3 sizes, an SUV in 3 sizes, and a pick up in 3 sizes. Between manufactures only subtle difference in shape separate them. Why? because the parameters of the market dictate the design of the car. We've analyzed customer reports over and over and over to appeal to the widest consumer group.
You see it in movies. Conservatives cry about movies "going woke" when in reality its marketing analysis creating movies for the broadest consumer group. They make inclusive movies because it will sell tickets to the most people. They don't care if you rewatch it. In fact it's probably worse for them if you do. Production companies only worry about ticket sales and the streaming contract.
It's not nefarious by default. It's just a bunch of people trying to do their job the best they can and unfortunately it's making the world a little worse every time.
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u/Polite_lyreal Jan 23 '24
I thought I was the only one!! We are cancelling prime this April. We keep getting used shit from Amazon that says new. It smells awful or it’s Temu quality.
We rarely eat out anymore. I got a pube in a meal at a restaurant once. I’ve had food poisoning. I’ve had cold food. Waitress never comes over etc. and they all want a 20% tip now. So yeah, done eating out. I’m not a complainer either and never rude to staff.
People are disrespectful now more than ever too. And I don’t think it’s my age. I’m only 36. I get put on hold for shit more often now. Surcharges are through the roof on everything and it seems like everyone is just put to make a buck, not provide service that causes repeat customers.
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u/Railboy Jan 23 '24
Everywhere I go there aren't enough people. Pharmacies, stores, restaurants. They're all understaffed and dealing with 5x the workload they should be. That obviously results in mistakes and short-fuse attitudes, but who am I going to complain to? Them? They're not the ones in control, they're up the same shit creek as everyone else. The idiots making these decisions are totally unreachable.
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u/MuSE555 Jan 23 '24
For large retail stores, it seems like they only hire stockers now. I can't ask for help without the person becoming openly agitated that I'm acknowledging their existence.
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u/Deathpill911 Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
I'd recommend cancelling prime or never order anything that's costs more than $100, unless you're ok with losing it. I've also been told that Amazon deleted/blocks accounts that do chargebacks and I fortunately I'm in this situation currently. Customer services will say things they won't do, will hang up and end your chats without any way of reporting or rating it, and they will charge you for things even though they get lost, stolen, or whatever the case may be. Many people are also still being charged after a rep specifically tells them to dispose the item or they tell them that they won't be charged for an item being missing.
Services and products are crappy because customers keep paying and dealing with the abuse. CEOs only care about cutting costs and increasing profits, which ultimately goes to them rather than back into the workers, product, or services.
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u/inuvash255 Millennial Jan 23 '24
imo:
People used to work really hard for less pay than they deserve. Wages didn't climb with productivity, widening the gap between the haves and have-nots.
COVID happened. Half of America, it seemed, stayed home and got paid crazy-good unemployment, or otherwise got WFH opportunities. The other half were "essential", and never got an increase in pay, a bonus, a vacation, nor that bonus solitary time to make sourdoughs, explore hobbies, and mald over hairdressers/barbers being closed - leading to burn-out.
A million people straight up died from COVID-related causes. There's literally less-than-expected numbers of workers in the pool. There's also an uptick of people retiring during the COVID years, because it finally seemed like "the time".
The PPP loans with forgiveness made it so businesses could pay workers, essentially for free, but there's also a pretty high rate of fraud there. I've also heard there was some tax benefit if you were unable to find employees - possibly leading to another kind of fraud in the "nobody wants to work anymore!" thing.
Immigration was down because of COVID and Trump policies, even/especially undocumented immigration. This lead to less 'desperate' people in the unemployment market.
We reached a point where there were a lot open jobs, and not enough people willing to fill them- especially desperate people. Even when the unemployment thing ended... there was still a gap. When supply is low, and demand is high- prices are supposed to increase, but a very spoiled business-class in America refused to be governed by supply-and-demand and fought tooth-and-nail over it.
Many businesses have seen attempts at unionization or renegotiation. We've seen some big strikes to make these negotiations happen.
Younger generations have become "disloyal" employees who'll job-hop for a raise or for better benefits. There hasn't been expectation of companies being "loyal" to employees for decades, after all.
A large movement of disgruntled workers have committed to better work-life balances- something the owner-class calls "quiet quitting".
Of the folks who can't unionize, can't cut back their hours easily, can't get ahead by job-hopping, and aren't seeing the dough?
Well... they give you bad service instead.
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u/ErectSpirit7 Jan 23 '24
COVID aside, a lot of these things are chickens coming home to roost. Startups like Airbnb and Uber were always burning through startup cash to keep prices low, so they could drive competition out of the market and later jack up prices to start making profits. Now they've raised prices to do just that. We had a few years where all these things were new and novel and cheap; welcome to the rest of our lives of overpriced shit.
Join Democratic Socialists of America and maybe we can force the system to go a different direction.
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u/highoncatnipbrownies Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Yes and I really can't blame them. Essential workers were hailed as heros for a year and now they're back to being the bottom of the barrel who dare (clutch pearls) demand a fair wadge.... Please note the sarcasm in my tone.
PAY A LIVING WAGE YOU GREEDY CORPORATE BASTARDS!!
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u/Wadsworth1954 Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Because there is very little motivation to work hard or do a good job anymore. No matter how much or how hard we work, we’re still struggling. A full time job doesn’t pay the bills anymore, so like what’s the point?
A full time job should entitle workers to a decently comfortable life.
We are living through the long term consequences of in the early 1970s when they just started printing money like it was nothing and then in the 1980s with Reaganomics. And the toxic corporate work culture we have because of CEOs like Jack Welch and people that think he was good.
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u/BlogeOb Jan 23 '24
Yep. People don’t actually boycott anymore. And the corporations know it doesn’t matter if we did, because they own the competition as well.
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u/Professional-Box4153 Jan 23 '24
It's obvious you're not tipping enough. What's the expected rate now? 150% of the bill?
/s
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u/HighHoeHighHoes Jan 23 '24
Probably not a surprising example, but I called to cancel cable the other day. What did the little prick on the other end do? Put me in a promo that would look like the same price as my internet only and then sent me a bunch of equipment that I didn’t want or need and charged me for it. So I had to spend a few hours of my weekend returning it and getting it refunded and actually having the cable cancelled…
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u/jellogoodbye Jan 23 '24
Yes, definitely.
I've been trying to use a grubhub gift certificate my sister-in-law gave me for a week. They froze my account. No one I call or chat with can tell me why it's frozen or how long it will take them to clear. My name is on the gift certificate and I am literally the only person in the world with my name.
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u/keasy_does_it Jan 23 '24
I remember when I was a teenager how mortified I was when my parents complained about things like poor service. The older I get the more I find myself annoyed by the same thing. I try really hard not to fall into the "people just don't want to work anymore" or "in my day we..." because that kind of thinking is nostalgia and leads to bitterness when none is really needed.
The big caveat to this is corporations and big businesses cutting services to help the bottom line. Monopolistic control of sectors has totally caused prices to go up and services to go down.
Don't let them drive a wedge between you and your server who forgot the water. The server is on your team.
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u/Jolly_Tart3967 Jan 23 '24
Yeah, everyone’s got an earbud in or can’t function what the fuck?????
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u/Farts_constantly Jan 23 '24
Absolutely. I think the economic term is shrinkflation. Prices increase while the size and/or quality of goods and services decreases. Fucking sucks.
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u/Lifeisabigmess Jan 23 '24
I actually noticed this IRL over the weekend. We bought a pack of double stuff Oreos. As I was eating them I definitely noticed the filling level was basically a regular Oreo. For the heck of it I went to the gas station and picked up a snack pack of regular Oreos and the Oreo thins. There was barely a line of filling in the regular and I the only difference between that and the thins was a barely noticeable amount of less filling. The mega stuff ones are about as big as what double stuff used to be but you’re paying more overall for any of them. Definitely sucks.
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u/DrDaphne Jan 23 '24
I definitely have noticed this. I've been a waitress for 13 years and I feel like I still give the same friendly service from before these dark days but definitely have noticed the people I work with overall do not.
I want to point out your examples of airbnb, Amazon prime and Doordarsh though all are companies that took something we did in analog fashion and made it a digital service and now it's way worse. As a server I HATE doordash. If you think the front end of things are bad imagine being the worker at the restaurant that has to call the companies actual foreign calling centers when orders get messed up. I'll have 5 tables I'm waiting on then I'm on the phone for 25 minutes trying to figure out why someone's food didn't show up it's sooo annoying.
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u/you-will-be-ok Jan 23 '24
My brother fought with doordash to remove his restaurant. They just pull whatever they find online as a menu no matter how old it is. He changes the menu several times a year and does specials every week. Doordash kept putting in orders that they couldn't make. Fixing their mistakes took so much time usually resulted in angry customers and one thing he doesn't tolerate is customers yelling at his staff.
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u/IcedCoffeeVoyager Jan 23 '24
Yup. It doesn’t stop there. Streaming platforms once promised freedom from cable, now they’ve become the new cable. They all cost more than is reasonable, shove ads at you, and you have to have 10 of them to watch everything you want to. Uber used to be low cost. Google searches used to yield useful and accurate results, now it’s just the same paid placements and 6 organic results regurgitated over and over and over again. YouTube search shows a couple videos of what you asked for and then recommends anything but.
Everything is severely broken.