[serf]

>please remember, when interacting with customer service agents (and the various ops folks at companies that hire from very similar talent pools), that you (very likely, if you are on HN) are in a ridiculously fortunate position in life relative to the customer service agent

I agree with the sentiment that 'you attract more flies with honey than vinegar' with regards to customer service folks, but disagree with the trope that HN-users (or computer-job-people in general) are somehow privileged and in a fortunate place in life simply due to where they hang out online or the categorization of work they do.

I also disagree with the stereotyping of customer service workers as disadvantaged.

simply put : I disagree with uninformed characterizations. I don't know anything about the life of the customer service worker that I need to call, and they don't know anything about mine; to assume anything with what little we both know about each other is a recipe for inaccurate profiling.

"try walking a mile in my shoes" isn't a literal request to learn more about the person you're judging, it's advice that suggests that 'the other' is ultimately unknowable and that presumption is worthless.

judge their job and the quality of that, maybe some accurate generalizations can be made about their job; I can agree that most customer-service work is low quality, grueling, and sometimes abusive.

Don't extrapolate judgements borne from work presumptions into 'total life quality & stature'; a person is more and has more than the work they do.

[Normille]

It's not so much that the customer service people are advantaged/disadvantaged or helpful/unhelpful that, in my opinion, makes it a compete waste of time ringing them. It's the fact that they have no real ability to solve any of your problems which are not down to error on your part.

The turnover of staff in call centres is continual and few people last long in the job. So the person you speak to is doubtless barely trained, knows nothing much about how the company works and, when speaking to you, is working from a script along the lines of _"Customer has problem A -- Suggest solution B"_. So is highly unlikely to be able to do anything to help you, if your problem is not on their script --and they have no authority to make any decisions beyond the most standard basic procedures, anyway.