Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

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That's a really horrible take on the employees - you should probably place the blame clearly on the company itself.

I worked at a phone company call center, back when landlines were more common (20+ years ago). I worked in an inbound call center, where everyone was late on their bill or already had service turned off. We literally didn't have the tools to help with a billing dispute, if that's what wound up causing the issue. We had limited ability to even discuss bills with customers.

Pretty much, we had the ability to help with their late phone bill.

And as frustrating as that is, I figure other companies are the same. It isn't "no incentive" to help, but they are probably stuck without any tools nor abilities to actually help. It isn't even lying, just a crappy way of running a company.

And it is very common. It does mean that it is easier to train folks: We already had a decent amount of training at that job, both classroom and non-classroom, but it was just enough to do our jobs and follow various state & federal laws.

No point in throwing the masses of low-level employees under a bus and crap on them when the likely culprit is corporate policy.

In my experience, via corporate mandate, customer support is incentivized only to close tickets. If they happen to help someone along the way, it's pure coincidence. Customer service doesn't work for the people opening tickets, after all.

To recognize this is not throwing anyone under the bus or placing blame on specific people. To deride people pointing this out helps ensure nothing improves for those seeking help

The employees deserve to be thrown under the bus for this imo. I’ve done support work, if any of them gave a shit they could have helped her, but they didn’t.

Stuff like this suggests major cultural problems across the entire org (which includes employees like this). Probably major changes required to fix.

I agree with this take for this specific situation.

If they can check on the item location in a system, why can they not check the ground truth with another employee at the other location?

In most cases, the employees don't have a choice. They are told to do things in a certain way. If they try do do things any other way, they run into a brick wall. Just consider the whole bit about calling the other airport. When they finally found a manager who was willing to override policy, there was no answer. (Accuse them of lying if you want, but there is a good chance they were being honest.)

Oddly enough, it sounds like the run around was induced by software. Notice how they were intended to communicate by adding notes to a file. Presumably a system was put in place to manage the volume of requests they handle, only it didn't work properly or it isn't being used properly.

I don’t buy this - I’ve seen good support people solve problems despite system inadequacies.

The guy in this story who said “your AirTag may be there but that doesn’t mean your bag is there” is the opposite of that type.

Maybe they left a note in the file, probably they did nothing.

We have very little idea of how the conversations played out. Did the guy say that initially, or did he say that after being pressed after saying that they could not contact the other airport directly? The former suggests someone who does not want to solve the problem. The latter suggests that the customer had pressed on until they became the problem.

It is easy to attribute malice to someone when the solution seems to be obvious. It is easy to imply actions or inaction when you have no basis for it outside of a feeling that doing X will result in Y. It's more difficult to see the consequences of that obvious solution.

I spend a good part of some days tracking down and trying to resolve problems because of a combination of policies and software that sucks. Sometimes I make people incredibly happy because I accomplished something noone else could. Sometimes I leave people disappointed, not because their problems are unsolvable but because overstepping certain bounds will break things elsewhere. When I try placing myself in the airline's position, I'm seeing a situation with broken policies and procedures, but also of incredible consequences if circumventing thos policies and procedures was the norm.

Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy.

Sure, the corp can create incentives, but it's always the individual's fault if they choose to lie.

No it’s not. If the shitty company at your shitty job pays you to lie to people it is a matter of corporate policy. Of course the individual has some responsibility, but the corporation has more.

Would you lie if your boss told you to lie?

I mean, it depends? Is there a good reason? How bad is the lie? Who am I lying to? Am I at risk of being fired if I don’t? Do I really need the job or not so much?

Why? Do you never ever lie?

I think generally it’s better to never lie outside of a few rare corner cases (mostly around avoiding violence).

Those corner cases have basically never come up in my life (stuff like the SS coming to your door and asking if you’re hiding Jews).

Most of the times people justify their own lying they’re wrong to do so imo.

Does your boss even tell you explicitly to lie or just to calm and reassure the user and pass the info down to someone else?

Would you lie to your boss about if, you lied or not, according to directions

If your job is paying you to beat up pregnant women, would you still say that it was primarily on the corporation?

People are responsible for their own moral choices.

Is beating a pregnant woman the same as giving poor customer support?

What is the morality of working a customer support job to support yourself, if the company you work for gives poor customer support as a matter of policy/choice? Would that make you a bad person? If you do business with such a company, and make the mistake of calling for customer support, what would that say about you?

It depends, I guess? If someone was going around offering anyone $10m to beat up a pregnant woman, then yeah I’d say they are the main person to blame if a pregnant woman gets beat up as a result.

Again, that’s not to say that the person who did the beating isn’t also responsible.

You’re still responsible for your own actions. Sure, someone else may be complicit and share responsibility for coercing you or creating perverse incentives to motivate you to make a particular choice, but you still choose your actions.

> Lying and dishonesty is a personal matter, not one of corporate policy.

Would that this were true. Hundreds of UK sub-postmasters will tell you of their experience of extreme mistreatment based on the UK Post Office lying as a matter of corporate policy.

If only that were true.

My own incompetance in the call center was made up of two things: 1. Absolutely no training on the things in question 2. Absolutely no way for my corporate ID to allow access to details.

There weren't lies. Just things I couldn't do.

In some places, even if you can do something, you can't and keep your job. Sorry, but I'm gonna lie if it means my family eats that night. I expect you to do the same.

Many companies order their employees to lie.

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