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Last Friday I witnessed a Turning. Its been a long time since I’ve seen a Turning. A Turning is basically when a once friendly, easygoing person becomes a bitter, cynical hateful customer service representative. The day had started out innocently enough. I went to a remote office to repair a laptop and was actually looking forward to it. The drive had been decent and the people at this office are always friendly and happy to see me. When I got there though, there were very few people in the office and a line of customers going out the door. Since there wasn’t anything I could do to help, I grabbed the equipment I was there to repair and disappeared into the back of the office to hide and work. I emerged less than an hour later, and the red-haired lady who had been working the service counter was just coming back. She looked pissed, and when I said ‘Hi’ she just glared at me and grunted. I was confused… Something about the look seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it… I’ve been out of Customer Service for quite some time. A customer service lady with blonde hair walked in the door at this time and was bombarded by comments from the red-haired lady. Red-Haired Lady: “I’ve been up-front since you left. I just now got back. Then there was this guy who kept saying out loud ‘when are you going to call the other people up’ and after the third time he said it I said ‘they are all either sick or on lunch’ and he got all huffy” She went on about how stupid he was for a few minutes. The Blonde Lady never got a word in edgewise. I made the mistake of piping into the conversation at this point.

Me: “Well, if I were a customer and I had to wait in a line like that, I’d complain too”. Red-Haired Lady: “Well, thats not my problem.” Me: “I know that. Its not their problem either though.” Red-Haired Lady: “There are a dozen ways to pay your bill.” Me: “But they chose this one, and we offer it as a service. Us being shorthanded really shouldn’t be a customers problem.” Red-Haired Lady: “I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you.” Me: “You dont have to. I’m saying things from a customers viewpoint. All they see is a long line and only one person working” Red-Haired Lady: “You are attacking me. I shouldn’t have to defend myself to you. Stop attacking me” Me: “I’m not attacking you, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just saying things from a customers viewpoint” Red-Haired Lady: “Just look at the logs –Wait a minute. I dont have to explain myself to you. Stop attacking me.”

Suddenly my memory came back. Years of things I had blocked out about working with people. The lack of hope, the desire to see customers and management suffer, the permanant scowl… it was coming back to me. It was then that I knew, she had just Turned. But I said nothing. I walked away. I knew better. Nothing I would say would dig me out of that hole, and there was no way she’d see it from a customers point of view again until she had been away from contact with them for awhile. She was at an early stage of the turning yet. There are a few stages to a Turning. The first is like a ‘snap’, or even an epiphany… where you realize you are powerless to do anything to help anyone, and the people are still expecting you to have all the answers. The utter helplessness and anger that is felt like this builds up and then seeks release. Everything you do is barely contained rage, and you snarl a lot. Some people never leave this stage. The next stage is apathy mixed with evil. You stop caring if people get what they want. You start to play with people’s heads because thats all that really amuses you anymore. You only make sure everything is done 100% by the book if it means you can make a fellow coworker you dont like look like a complete ass. Once you reach this stage it takes years to get back to normal. Some people never recover. My turning happened in 1999. I’ve never fully recovered. I still hate people. Comment on this post.