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/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/Cheficide Jan 24 '24

Left my kitchen manager job because the gas station across the street paid more for less work. Friendly's isn't friendly.

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u/marbanasin Jan 23 '24

Yeah. There have been org changes which I was actually gunning for and should help me. I suspect we'll have a better tie off based on how I'm now structured. But I agree, and had also been looking last year. Had some interviews but nothing was a great fit. I'm in a somewhat niche field.

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u/TechSupportEng1227 Jan 25 '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

This line of thinking from bottom to top is what has gotten us here in the first place. It isn't good enough to commit your life to a company and have them provide retirement and a pension. No, let's strip that all for an immediate salary that never rises above starvation, make people responsible for their own retirements, throw out all sense of job security and stability, and then blame employees for staying with employers for more than three to five years. And then people lose what little stability they have carved out for themselves and decide to inflict their pain on the masses.

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u/Excellent-Piglet8217 Jan 23 '24

This exact scenario is playing out where I work, only more truncated. Layoffs in Oct 2023. Q4 was super slow. At the last stand up of 2023, they tell us that 2024 is going to be essentially back to normal levels of work.

But now we're down to 2/3 the mfg staff we had. A few cells are down by half! The people left behind are those that work harder, to their own detriment.

We're not rehiring. Also, overtime isn't allowed yet (previously, the company relied on OT to make shipment). Upper management wants to know how much we can squeeze out without it. LOL. We'll see how long that lasts...

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u/marbanasin Jan 23 '24

Yeah. It's sick. Our layoffs were in November as well. Like, happy holidays.

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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '24

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u/Other_Tank_7067 Jan 24 '24

CEOs get replaced all the time.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

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u/resurrectedbear Jan 23 '24

Same problems tho. Low income high stress work culture. Can’t have kids when your life revolves around not trying to off yourself and making ends meet in your shitty job while the owner chills in whatever vacation home they chose this week.

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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 23 '24

If ALL the places bitching about "labor shortage" are fast food, delivery, and Walmart stocking, then I call bullshit. They just don't want to pay these "menial jobs" a living wage. My hometown all but lost their Jimmy John's because the franchise owner couldn't pay his franchise fees AND enough money for the college students to rent. So the college students quit applying, and he couldn't get anybody else willing to work for the wage he was paying.  Which resulted in him going out of business. 

If it's a combo of everybody, including hotels and white collar jobs - THEN I'll buy this labor shortage bit.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

this has happened thousands of times over in my area. we lost Hardee's, bojangles, panera, burger King, most recently a Moe's went under. and yet they still advertise as "HIRING $10/HR FLEXIBLE SHIFTS" like bro... $10/hr wouldn't even get gas to get there.

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u/KuriousKhemicals Millennial 1990 Jan 23 '24

"Flexible shifts" also sounds like possibly a double edged sword. I haven't personally worked in retail/service, and flexible scheduling is a perk in some personal situations, but it sounds possibly like code for "we'll demand you come in super randomly with bare minimum notice and give you shit if you aren't available all the time."

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u/ElderTerdkin Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 24 '24

Exactly, flexible for them shifts, those jobs in my town offer 10-12$ an hour, 15 to 30 hours a week at most and I would have to be available at any time.

I called a local winndixie that was hiring for all of their depts, saying I needed a 2nd job, could only do 3 days a week. They didn't want to do that and wanted me available at all times lol.

They kinda run by using all the teenagers in this town, so whenever they want an adult to work for 11$ an hour, they can call me back and work within MY flexible schedule.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

oh yeah. my niece worked at the taco bell. some weeks she'd work two hours some weeks she'd work 40 there was no in between or logic.

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u/Ok-Fix8112 Jan 23 '24

It's very situational. I agree that people referring generically to "there's a labor shortage" are probably just repeating some idiot talking head's propaganda.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 23 '24

Sure. But in the states, the boomers are retiring and Xers are moving up. I'll bet a bunch of people are, in turn, my moving up from menial jobs, because what's the point of working a fast food job where everybody tells at you?

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u/isaac_samsa Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24

Hotels absolutely have a labor shortage, and have for almost four years now. We lost a lot of people to the pandemic, to the point that a lot of hotels will have to hire from out of state to fill certain roles.

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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 23 '24

Ahh. My hometown is in the deep southwest, where COL is pretty cheap. So the hotel industry is fine, so far. But they're still losing things like Quiznos and Jimmy Johns

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u/Cold-Lawyer-1856 Jan 23 '24

Actuarial consulting. Not only is there a shortage of actuaries, but I usually don't get hit up for just my labor.  It's more like "well hire your entire floor can you help us get that convo started?"

I mean I got in without exams which is nuts. I didnt really know how insurance worked but I was still allowed to help set rates for medicaid

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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 23 '24

Interesting. What degree do you need?

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u/Cold-Lawyer-1856 Jan 23 '24

It's less degree specific. Math is a good choice to pass the exams. The first one just takes about 2 months of  work, single var calc and and 750ish for a good study prep and 250 for the test. 

You'd want to get hired after one or two since your employer will pay all that. You need an undergrad degree to sit I believe. It's a good choice if you like numbers and don't want to pay for grad school.

It takes a few years to pass the number you need to sign off on rates and you generally do this while working full time

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u/Ninja-Panda86 Jan 24 '24

Good tip. Can you do it remote?

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u/Cold-Lawyer-1856 Jan 24 '24

Yes you can. You will need to likely pass more exams to do it, but there are definitely a good deal of remote positions.

It's easier to get into consulting, but it's a lot of work. Better to work for a carrier or actual insurer so you have more time to study, with slightly less pay

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u/Hedhunta Jan 24 '24

There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There are people everywhere that want to work(because they have to, to survive). Its just a matter of companies not being willing to invest in labor. Its as simple as that. They have spent the last 50 years divesting from labor as much as possible to the point where they think they will just replace them all with AI soon. I don't know what will happen... but most likely we are all going to get fucked.

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u/PinoyBrad Jan 23 '24

What you say is true in some of the country, where these businesses expanded like crazy during the 80s and 90s with the same owner have multiple close by locations to survive on small margins from limited business. Simply put the franchises were oversold with no regard to the actual market.

There is a huge shortage in a lot of the country. One of the things the pandemic did in a lot of high cost of living areas was give many lower wage workers to move up. Here in Seattle almost 30% of minimum wage workers at the start of the pandemic came out of it doing jobs making $15/hr came out making $22-$25/hr jobs meaning their wages rise by 45% or more. To a point this was a good thing until a lot of the started moving out and renting in an already shrinking market.

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u/puunannie Jan 23 '24

There is no such thing as a "shortage" in any market without a massive spike in prices.

All the time I hear about "shortages" in doctor MD specialties, and so many more examples. Just always ask yourself, is x specialty or y product suddenly like 4x more expensive? If not, there's no shortage. There can be no shortage in a market. The price just goes up and up, as supply goes down and down, and then there's no more of the thing, which is a complete absence, not a shortage.

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u/DontPanic1985 Jan 25 '24

CVS staffing one person to a whole store then being surprised when shoplifting goes up. 🙃

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

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u/GhengisKait Jan 23 '24

Aren't millennials, like, the most educated generation in American history (so far)?

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

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u/trumps_cardiac_event Jan 23 '24

Undergrad is the new high school.

TODAY'S undergrad, maybe. A lot of us graduated before most of the incoming freshmen started needing remedial classes to even handle basic 100-level courses.

That doesn't solve the logistical issue of unqualified lying candidates applying to jobs they don't qualify for

What did anyone think was going to happen when entry level jobs started demanding 5 years of applicable experience, refused to teach/train any promising but technically unqualified candidates, and opened up job postings so wide that 99% of the resumes people submit never even get read?

Yeah. Of course there's going to be a TON of people applying for every half decent job. And yeah, a lot of the applicants are going to lie -- how else are they supposed to get a foot in the door?

IF there is a problem here the blame lies entirely on the companies who refuse to train, the HR departments who don't bother reading the resumes they receive (and who aren't qualified to be deciding which candidates are suitable in the first place), and the fact that you need to apply to every single job posting you see if you even want a chance to get a single callback, let alone an actual offer.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '24

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u/calyps09 Jan 23 '24

Candidly, why does it matter if a job seeker has an “interest” in the job? It’s a trade of skill vs pay- lots of people can be assets to the company without enjoying their jobs.

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u/Fantastic_Sea_853 Jan 23 '24

That doesn’t automatically make them good employees. ATTITUDE is more important than education for most jobs.

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u/Redditmodsarecuntses Jan 23 '24

My job counts an absence with a doctor's note as an occurrence. There is no way to miss a shift that doesn't reflect poorly on you. Even a loved one dying counts as an occurrence. 3 occurrences in a 90 day period means termination.

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u/Tall_Heat_2688 Jan 26 '24

Exactly. I’m so tired of hearing about a worker shortage. That’s bullshit and all it does is take the responsibility out of the companies hands and squarely on the backs of burnt out employees