E-Mail 2.015

Before we get into the main subject of today's post, I want to give everyone an update on my writing. This past weekend, I just finished chapter the III of my current project. For those who don't think that isn't much of anything, please keep in mind that I first write everything out by hand then transcribe, so it takes me an incredible amount of time to write. I'm currently sitting at 14,639 words.

Now, on to the show.

Disclaimer: This is something that I feel very passionate about because it is affecting my career quite insidiously. If the tone is too sharp for you to handle, please feel free to check out my Tumblr blog, which contains recaps of the previous weeks blog postings (please note, it sucks up lotsa bandwidth).

I mostly have a hate-hate relationship when it comes to business e-mail. I find it to be a smelly skidmark on the underwear of work and hands down, can do untold damage to one's career, especially if you have a supervisor who is unwilling to look beyond the 2% complaints, thus holding you to impossibly unobtainable standard.

Before  I go any further,  I must explain the difference between true customer service and pseudo customer service. True customer service is what you experience on a day-to-day and even hour-to-hour basis in your life. You patronize a business and expect to be treated not necessarily special, but like an equal to the person helping you out with your particular issue, because we all know that you usually get back what you put into it. By the same token, if you have crappy customer service, besides making a complaint about it, you can also punish them by closing your wallet.

Pseudo customer service is what you forced to deliver when you're working a large guv't entity, usually on the state or federal level. Pseudo is usually internal, and for the most part, especially if you're working for a large entity like I do, its dealing with temper tantrums from people who can ruin your career just because they can.

Where I work, it's mostly dealing with temper tantrums from those kind of people. These temper tantrums are the direct result of a deeply embedded dual destructive culture of entitlement/inability to accept the word no.

The litany of complaints I've gotten over the years just directly due to this dual destructive culture is absolutely mind-boggling and staggering. In the real world, 95% of those complaints would be instantly dismissed, but here, they're treated as the equivalent as the tail wagging the dog.

As a few of you have probably ascertained over the past 8 years, I can be extremely blunt/sharp, honest and have an extremely low tolerance of stupid. Some of you even had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of my retorts, which I have sincerely apologized for over the years, so you know how nasty, yet entirely professional I can be.

Over the past 10 years at my current place of debauchery, I've had the misfortune of creating that bad (in some eyes) first impression and it has haunted me ever since. To whit, out of nine annual evaluations 2006-14, I have only gotten a "good" for Ability To Deal With People only once, a "poor" once and "fair" seven times. This, in spite of the fact that I am told numerous occasions that they want me to move on because I can do the job, if only I would do better with "customer service."

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but this is your fault. You chose to focus on the 3% negative instead of the 97% positive. You, not me, have sabotage any and all chances that I have in trying to transfer out of my agency or even out of my unit. You, not me, have ignored any and all viable solutions that I have offered to rectify this problem, and because of that ignorance, you still decide to punish me.

And yet you wonder why I don't give a shit anymore. It's directly due to you, and everyone else, demonstrating that what you do speaks at 120 decibels, whereas what you say, speaks only at 50 decibels.

Remember, what comes around goes around, and continuing to give maximum effort for zero return is ultimately workplace suicide. Especially when you're forced to practice pseudo customer service and forced to swallow everyone's garbage, because heaven forbid, you utter the infamous N word (no not the one that starts with n and ends with r, which I find personally abhorrent) at someone who makes twice your salary, has 10% of your smarts and suffers from inflated sense of importance that is larger than The Donald's.

And that, my friends, is how you properly start off a Monday.

(c) 2015 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.