Who Wants to Catch Flies?

We have all heard the cliché about catching flies with vinegar or honey, something to the effect that honey is a more successful method, but who wants to catch flies anyway? Having a heavy retail background I can tell you that very few if any individuals take this philosophy to heart. Perhaps we’re conditioned so horribly to rely on others that we have simply decided to discontinue taking ownership of our own problems or maybe we just have such high expectations that it causes belligerency. Regardless, it is time that we take a stand and start defending the front lines of our work force and not take ignorance and rudeness as a viable option when we overhear such a situation.

Some might say that the only way to accomplish what you need is to bully a customer service representative into getting what you want until finally you have to ask for a supervisor and then bully that person. It’s simply ineffective, customer service representatives don’t have to help their customers, they do so by choice, either because they choose to maintain their employment out of fear of being fired, or because they choose to help their customers because their customers have asked nicely with common decency and appreciation. It is not a fair tactic to address a rep into providing a need that might be against company policy or even against the law in some cases.

I would be willing to guess that everyone has had to employ the services of a notary public at least once during their life. The purpose of such a service is to identify the individual signing and notarize the document acknowledging that the notary has witnessed the signature and properly identified the signer according to state regulations. I personally have witnessed a number of situations that involved individuals becoming angry that a notary would not comply with their request due to reasons varying from their only form of photo identification being an old high school year book, or the document having already been signed and the signer was not even present while their “agent” provided the document for notary. Regardless, in both of these situations, the customers who were in need of the service became belligerent, angry, offensive, and down right rude throwing a childlike tantrum right there in front of other customers expecting to get a response out of the notary. Laughter is my only response, are people really this ignorant? I mean seriously, wouldn’t you feel stupid if you went to a notary, asked for them to notarize a document and realized that you had forgotten your ID? Sure, and you would completely understand when the notary who doesn’t know you personally says, “I’m sorry, I’ll have to see some form of photo identification in order to provide this service.” And wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you became angry at your own neglect and showed that side of your flawed personality in public, I sure would be.