A Sorry Win
Jul. 20th, 2010 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflydreamingAn hour or so I felt made of awesome. Now I'm kind of depressed about the whole incident.
Over the phone, I offered a customer (Michelle) an explanation of why she might be now having a problem that she didn't have before. I said that if she had automatic updates enabled, something could have been updated in her system that was now having her get the typical error message that we know people get when they use refills in that style of printer. (I don't really know why. We offered her the directions for clearing the error message when she came in, and she said then that she didn't need them because she hadn't needed them before.) Appalled at the dasterdly machinations of printer manufacturers' sneaky ways, she exclaimed...
"That's so gay!"
A one second pause. Then I told her, "Don't use gay as a pejorative. It makes you sound ignorant."
She went off her crackers, telling me 1)that I must be gay (my reply, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"*) and then 2)that I should have let it go. She said that because I was giving customer service that I shouldn't have said anything about it.
I suggested that she might like to complain about me, and that I would happily give her the owners contact information so that she could do so. I also asked her for her email address so that I could email the error clearing directions. Repeated it back, and one or the other of us got it wrong, because the email bounced. She came in an hour later, fuming, but T took care of her, giving her the instruction sheet.
It is something of a win, because she is not going to be able to use that expression again without thinking of this incident. She might complain to her friends about what I said to her; maybe one or some of them will think about their own figures of speech and choice of expressions. There is a tiny, tiny chance that after she gets over being affronted, she will even understand that some people think "that's so gay" is not an okay thing to say.
I need to focus on the progressive possibilities, because otherwise it's just sad making. I suppose she was embarrassed for being corrected, and like most people would was responding to the criticism defensively. But an hour later, still being mad and still wanting to make a complaint... that makes me feel that she really doesn't get what was wrong about using that expression. Especially because she acted like I had taken personal offense due to being gay. It makes me suspect that she does have a problem with homosexuals. So uppity, wanting to be treated like anybody else. If her reaction had been, "I didn't mean it that way," or "oops, not PC I guess", maybe we could have had a conversation about it. A dialog.
I'm not worried about getting in trouble over this. If I do, I'll be disappointed in my boss. Not as a boss, but another person, a fellow human being. To me, this falls into the same category as saying racist things casually. D has taught me not to use "retarded" this way, and along the same lines, I am trying to correct myself from using "lame" for the same reasons. None of these clarify meaning, unless that really is what you mean, in which case it's just bad manners. (Or, in the right company, tongue-in-cheek.)
I had to say something. I still think I was right to do it.
*because that is not relevant, and wow, seriously?
Over the phone, I offered a customer (Michelle) an explanation of why she might be now having a problem that she didn't have before. I said that if she had automatic updates enabled, something could have been updated in her system that was now having her get the typical error message that we know people get when they use refills in that style of printer. (I don't really know why. We offered her the directions for clearing the error message when she came in, and she said then that she didn't need them because she hadn't needed them before.) Appalled at the dasterdly machinations of printer manufacturers' sneaky ways, she exclaimed...
"That's so gay!"
A one second pause. Then I told her, "Don't use gay as a pejorative. It makes you sound ignorant."
She went off her crackers, telling me 1)that I must be gay (my reply, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"*) and then 2)that I should have let it go. She said that because I was giving customer service that I shouldn't have said anything about it.
I suggested that she might like to complain about me, and that I would happily give her the owners contact information so that she could do so. I also asked her for her email address so that I could email the error clearing directions. Repeated it back, and one or the other of us got it wrong, because the email bounced. She came in an hour later, fuming, but T took care of her, giving her the instruction sheet.
It is something of a win, because she is not going to be able to use that expression again without thinking of this incident. She might complain to her friends about what I said to her; maybe one or some of them will think about their own figures of speech and choice of expressions. There is a tiny, tiny chance that after she gets over being affronted, she will even understand that some people think "that's so gay" is not an okay thing to say.
I need to focus on the progressive possibilities, because otherwise it's just sad making. I suppose she was embarrassed for being corrected, and like most people would was responding to the criticism defensively. But an hour later, still being mad and still wanting to make a complaint... that makes me feel that she really doesn't get what was wrong about using that expression. Especially because she acted like I had taken personal offense due to being gay. It makes me suspect that she does have a problem with homosexuals. So uppity, wanting to be treated like anybody else. If her reaction had been, "I didn't mean it that way," or "oops, not PC I guess", maybe we could have had a conversation about it. A dialog.
I'm not worried about getting in trouble over this. If I do, I'll be disappointed in my boss. Not as a boss, but another person, a fellow human being. To me, this falls into the same category as saying racist things casually. D has taught me not to use "retarded" this way, and along the same lines, I am trying to correct myself from using "lame" for the same reasons. None of these clarify meaning, unless that really is what you mean, in which case it's just bad manners. (Or, in the right company, tongue-in-cheek.)
I had to say something. I still think I was right to do it.
*because that is not relevant, and wow, seriously?
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 03:13 pm (UTC)OTOH, she'll definitely think before saying that again.