I am sailing into my seventh year as a 1-800 number customer service representative. That's right, this Hub is a horror Hub. So if you are squeamish, please leave now. Management will not be held liable for heart attacks, strokes, vein popping, or any other physical or mental impairments resulting from attempts to get, give, or talk about customer service.

My rants have become so famillar I can pretty much turn them on at will and go do something else. I can rant about this topic in my sleep now, but what motivated me to write this particular hub was a golden moment in a meeting yesterday, where a not-so-innocent question (from me, bitter longtime CSR) provoked the following exasperated answer from managment:

"Look, from a management perspective, taking care of the customers we already have just isn't profitable. We want new customers and that's all we want. If you start taking the time to solve one existing customer's problem, pretty soon they are all going to expect it. Just get them off the phone unless they are going to buy something."

I've been waiting seven years for someone in management to say it just that plainly. I mean, we all KNOW it's true, right? But I wanted them to say it, admit it, blurt it out, tell the truth!!!!

For a moment I was in shock. I wasn't sure I'd heard what I'd heard. But as it began to sink in, I felt this wave of satisfaction sweep over me at the final truthiness of it all. Persist, and you will one day succeed. It only took me just under seven years to succeed at getting a corporate management drone to say it out loud.

I rock.

At my current CSR job, we have the phone menu from hell. It goes on for five minutes, asking you to punch in everything from your blood type to your grandmother's maiden name and then giving you inadequate time to enter this info via your dial pad. Because of this, many customers have to hang up and start over as many as four or five times before they get to a CSR, at which point there is a good chance they will be immediately transferred to another phone menu and eventually, another CSR. By the time they get to me, they are generally a tad cranky.

Here's a sample conversation, one I had just yesterday:

"Thank you for calling Behemoth Bank, my name is P Grundy, how may I not help you today?"

"Hold it right there! I want to ask you a personal question before we go any further!"

"No problem. Shoot me."

"Have you ever personally called this bank and tried to navigate your own goddamn phone menu???"

"Yes sir, it's truly hideous sir. A masterpiece of passive-aggressive torture disguised as convenience."

"Well then how the hell..."

"Excuse me for interrupting you sir, but you can bypass the entire menu by hitting *0 at any time. Just a head's up for future calls. And, you're welcome."

"It doesn't tell you that! How the hell am I supposed to know that!?!"

"You're not supposed to know that. I'm telling you that for future calls. Also, I'm hoping this call is recorded so I can get fired for telling you that, and collect unemployment insurance, something I've never received in 37 years of working hard constantly. Help me sir. Please. Help me escape."

How, you may well ask, did we ever get to this sorry state of affairs? You may have heard stories about a long-ago time in America when business was conducted by 1) providing a service or a product that 2) customers then purchased and 3) the merchant, who was 4) a human being 5) encouraged the customers buy more of, enriching 6) the merchant and making 7) the customers 8) happy.

Any fool can see that this is way too many steps.

President Ronald Reagan (also known as Saint Ronald of Our Most Holy Supply Side) certainly saw it, which is why back in the 1980's he cleared away lots of pesky regulations that limited the size and the activities of money-making corporations. By instigating these changes, President Ron made it possible for corporations to become large enough and strong enough to cut this antiquated business model down to only three simple steps: 1) Customer needs product or service, 2) gigantic corporate entity promises to provide product or service and takes lots of customer's money as an electronic debit from customer's bank account, then 3) customer futilely calls worthless 1-800 customer service number over and over again trying to get promised product or service or refund or whatever (Does it really matter what these silly customers want? Do we even care?) until customer dies or gives up or both.

This direct flow of customer money away from their own personal bank accounts into the bank accounts of corporate CEOs has created millions of new jobs for people with advanced degrees, thus transforming our country from a gritty, 19th century manufacturing economy, to a sleek 21st century service economy, where even the most impractical, over-educated PhD has the same opportunity as any recent high school graduate to protect corporate CEOs from customers by forming a human phone-answering shield and not helping anybody.

For example, in November of 2007 our bank's CEO left the company with a severance package of $240 million after making decisions that took the bank's stock from $38.74 per share last summer down to $5.25 per share as of this March. He did this, I am certain, to set an example for the rest of us. He wanted to show that, contrary to all the recent negative press, there is no double standard in corporate America. Every single overpaid CEO is as committed to not helping anyone with anything as any lowly CSR. We are all equals in this brave new business model. His work done, he has moved on, passing the torch to his successor, who is trying hard to surpass his achievements.

Only in America.

Hey, if I knew would I be working in a call center?

Seriously though, stop dealing with corporations, if possible. I mean period, ever. Anytime you can buy from or deal with a real human person whose name you know and who you can go see, live, when you need something, do that instead. Write to your congresspersons and let them know that you don't appreciate 1) being charged $300 for a cell phone termination fee when your contract has long run out and you don't owe this fee, 2) being charged hundreds of dollars in bank fees because your bank did not make the paycheck you've been depositing for 20 years available for three days after you put that hard-earned money in the bank, 3) fill in your own horror story (I know you have one so come on, let it rip) here, and 4) watching CEOs make millions of dollars for running corporations into the ground and losing your hard earned money, without apology.

Make noise. Speak up. Smash that phone.

And oh yes, dial *0 to get right to a live human being (who can't help you either)!