Many places that cater to multiple customers deal with a knomira sooner or later. To prepare the staff, the owner hires others of many races, including humans, to come in pretending to be knomiras to help the staff train for such an eventuality. Security is, of course, informed ahead of time about the test, as are medics, just in case. The staff, however, are not. -- Anon Guest
Sooner or later, one of those customers blow in. The staff never know the full story, why they're like that, or how frustrating their day has been up to that minute. What they do know is that a phenominal number of them are Dereggers. Specifically, Dereggers who have been thrown aside for a younger, prettier, and more docile model.
There are others that break that mould, but they are significantly rarer.
Centuries ago, before Humanity shattered its own history and scattered to the stars, there was a concept called the secret shopper. Their existence was to test customer service at various franchises. The idea persisted, or was reborn, the instant Knomiras became a presence in Galactic Society.
All the training in the universe cannot prepare for the real deal.
He was angry, he was standing on the counter because he was two feet tall. He was fluffed up to make himself look bigger and screeching like fingernails run down a chalkboard. "Are you deaf?" he squawked. "I said I wanted the upside-down cupcake served up rightways! And I want my ice drink with the ice on the bottom!"
"Sir, intimidating staff is not tolerated on these premises," said the Salesperson Mye, keeping her body language proud and uncowed. "If you continue to behave in this manner, I shall have to ask you to leave."
"I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!"
"Certainly, sir. I'll just go fetch her." Mye locked the till, left the counter, and retreated to the break room for a five-minute cooldown for them both. She checked the cam feeds to find the trouble customer still being angry in his place, and fetched the manager as requested.
Who left her work at the back to journey out the front and cross her arms at the angry avian.
"Ice on the bottom, is it? Really?"
The customer deflated. "It was the most ridiculous thing I could think of," he said. "Your staff weathered it all amazingly well. No sass, no backtalk. They let me say my thing and remained calm and reasonable throughout."
"Oh Powers, you're one of the secret trainers," said Mye. "Is it me, or does it suck that stuff like this still has to exist?"
"Sorry, Mye," said Manager Cirn. "They keep finding new Deregger worlds."
[Photo by Leiada Krozjhen on Unsplash]
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Send me a prompt [45 remaining prompts!]
When I was tasked for training rookies in call centers before they were put to the floor, the program I was in actually had intelligent supervisors. The last week of training was "call training" where we would call from a script. However, being as I'd been in call centers for a long time, they told me "Please be a bad customer" and nothing more.
In less than two minutes I had the guy at the other end nearly in tears. So I hung up my phone in the office, went to the training office and sat with him, offered him tissues, and apologized. I, then, talked to him about how I was just mimicking a customer I'd gotten just the week prior, without the profanity and rather crass insults she use. Once he calmed down, I gave him a 15 minute break and a coupon for the soda machine so he could get a free soda and calm his nerves.
Then I had him sit and listen to the recording of the call I had to deal with. Needless to say, he was shocked at her profanity, her insults, and her, well, bovine manure. Once you learn to weather those calls, call center work, while fast paced, isn't all that bad, even if you're the call-in complaint department. He was still there two years later when I quit.
I didn't quit due to the callers, however. I quit due to the behavior of my very... unpleasant supervisor. She's replaced my old supervisor six months prior, and was so bad, that even I'd had enough and left.
I read about it again and again on choice stories from r/antiwork - "People don't quit jobs, they quit bad bosses."
Props on dealing with Bovines, BTW