Customer service sucks

Having worked for years and years in support positions of one variety or another, I can safely say that spending your life in the direct service of others sucks the life right out of you.

Like any other job, its difficulty is magnified exponentially by the degree in which you try to excel. Nurses, technical support jockeys, retail clerks - all these jobs are pretty easy if you're the type to just coast along and make a concerted effort not to give a fuck about the quality of your work and the people it affects. Take it seriously though, and the job's demands will tap your soul like a vampire with a tapeworm.

Working to accommodate the needs of others takes skill, talent, planning and devotion. It's like being the cartilage in a knee, or the squishy rubber of a mountain bike tire, absorbing the impact and jolts and whiplash from every bump in the road, so as not to pass it on to the next guy.

Need something impossible, due to someone else's failure to plan their own life? No problem. Need something done in 5 minutes that usually takes 20? Hey, we'll give it a shot. Need a solution to a problem that isn't even in my field, much less my direct resposibility? You got it, champ. It takes a lot of guts to plant both your feet and shout with determination: "Sir, I am your squishy rubber!"

Not to say that other gigs aren't tough, but they're tough in a different way, I think. Overall, we're all in the business of helping or accommodating someone else, but those who deal face-to-face with those whom they serve know just how exhausting it is, compared to simply appeasing one, pointy-headed boss.

There should be a separate spa for those in the support industry. An oasis just for those who need it most. Hotel clerks, 911 operators, paramedics, teachers, but only the ones who demonstrate a willingness to do a decent job of it. A sanctuary, stocked with lots of booze and pot and hookers, no clocks and no phones but those that dial out. But most of all, they should all have comfortably-appointed soapboxes, constantly manned, where any visitor can plop down and bitch to their hearts content about the people and the predicaments they faced that week, and what geniuses they are for having braved the storm and found a solution to a problem they didn't cause. Because that's what those in the service industry need most: someone to unload on.

And the people on the other side of the soapbox, listening to all the haranguing of these special spa clients...? Heroin. All they want.