And here is why I loathe stores

For those who don’t follow my posts, I work for a company who has a major US carrier as one of its clients. I sometimes post on their forum and leave sassy responses to customers because it’s like therapy to me — non stop back to back calls for an always full call queue will stress anyone out.

It’s not always pointing fingers at customers to stop doing the things they do. There are times where I’m with the customer 250% because they got screwed by someone else in the company. Yeah, I don’t side with anyone by default. There are crappy customers, but there are also crappy reps.

Now back to the title. A couple called in because they wanted to activate a new phone. Nothing crazy, pretty mundane. What caused anger was what they told me. So they ordered online (half off activation fees and no high pressure salesman trying to push shit you don’t need). I would do the same. Anyway, they go to a local store to get help for activation. Waited 20 minutes before basically being told to F off. Guy even asked me if they didn’t want to help because they didn’t get a sale — of course they did because of that. Held my tongue, but we both knew.

Remember when I mentioned backed up queues? Guy waited for 45 minutes before he got to me. I had him power on the device and within a couple of minutes it’s active. Imagine going to a store for help then waiting nearly an hour to droning hold music only to have a resolution in less time than it takes to make Easy Mac.

All this donkey of a store rep had to was take 2 minutes of their time to advise the customer to power on their new device then confirm activation with a test call. It gets better. I shared the same story on a separate subreddit for that carrier and get downvoted from what appears to be triggered store reps who know they are useless beyond anything that gets a commission.

Imagine if this were you, a friend or a loved one. Imagine if a store rep was as useful as a doorknob. Imagine being on hold for nearly an hour because a store rep couldn’t bother doing the most basic of assistance. Store reps are like Pokemon trainers to me. I avoid eye contact to not have them try to trap me with their bullshit.