[xg15]

Slight aside, but:

> Would you sign up for a job where you get screamed at all day, every day? Why would you go through that, when there are a million other fields where that doesn’t happen?

The amount of customer service rep/call center jobs we have answers this with a "Yes", I think.

(Not taking into account the reasons people sign up for those jobs though. Probably not because it's their passion...)

[finnthehuman]

When I was younger there was a popular line of thinking that the typical highschool job in customer service was where people learned to grow up into the kind of people that wouldn't yell at customer service. It sounded like the kind of thing that could be true, but was certainly the kind of thing you want to be true if you have one of those jobs. I've recently been thinking it has merit.

-Having someone directly in my face yelling at me over a couple of dollars made it a practical necessity to cultivate in myself an industrial-strength version of "you can't control other people, you can only control how you react to them." And that includes calibrating your level of fear to the actual level of risk. Even if all you are is a wimpy teen somehow made shift lead, ya gotta look a scary motherfucker in the eyes and tell them "No," when the only thing you've got to defend yourself is "Get out or we're calling the cops."

-My sense of how to treat others is based on concepts of shared humanity. When someone is screaming at you, there ain't time or good reason to try and empathize with them. But you can't stoop to their level, either. So peg a bare minimum for behavior as a personal standard, and then try to live up to the standard. -- Consequently, I don't understand the trendy ideas on empathizing that posit I have to cultivate a personal connection before I can determine "oh yeah, it turns out I shouldn't be a prick to this person, either."

[DoreenMichele]

In all seriousness, no, I don't think so. They get some of that, but not all day, every day.

I shadowed a call center person for an hour at a Fortune 500 company. None of the calls were like that. They do get such calls. We talked about that. But, no, it is not exclusively what they deal with.

[stoolpigeon]

Retail it's not all day, every day but not uncommon either. The military can be that way though I guess it is expected a bit. Lots of jobs include abuse.