Complain or ignore it? Borderline situations.

[KotOD]

As someone that has been in Technical Support with a bit of customer service mixed into his career, I'm normally not a complainer. I tend to chalk up bad service to inexperience or fatigue or something similar, which is where most poor service starts. I also know when a line is crossed someone higher up has to be informed of the happenings. I know what it's like to get pasted by a boss that just got pasted by a VP at a customer company. That has stayed with me. However, now, as a manager, I want to know when my employees are screwing up so that I can correct it before I get pasted by the VP of some customer company.

I've been running into situations lately that seem borderline to me and I was wondering if I took the right line. Answer one or all of them, but if you split your answers and complain about some and don't complain about others, would you mind giving a reason?

1. While waiting for the gas attendant to mosey over to fill my tank, I notice that he's smoking while filling the SUV in front of me.

2. In line at the grocery store the cashier was either really bad at using the scanner for certain items, or the scanner was malfunctioning. She would flash the bar code to the scanner five times. Only after five failures and a grimace would she key in the item code manually.

3. At the Atlanta airport, an Oriental woman with little to no English skills is having a hard-time understanding a TSA security guard instructing to remove her sweater vest. The person between her and I finally makes her understand by taking his hoodie off. As she passes through the metal detector and hoodie guy is ready to go, the security guard says "Stupid mother-[censored] dyke chink, learn English" loudly enough so that at least three of us and one other guard hear this very clearly.

4. In an extremely busy bar, two guys to my right are incorrectly given full Guiness drafts when they asked for Black & Tans. The bartender throws them down on the glasses shelf and 10-15 minutes later, while waiting on the servers, sends those two drafts out with a waitress to the restaurant.


There are plenty of others that come up in day to day situations, and they happen to everyone. I'm just wondering how people would normally react. Other borderline situations are welcome, I find my on the spot rationale in these situation varies greatly.

[Paul B.]

1. "Would you mind putting that cigarette out before you fill up my tank?"
2. Ask for a receipt.
3. Ignore, unless you are "Oriental" (lol) like me. I would say "don't make me pull a VATech on your ass"
4. if the bartender looks busy/stressed I wouldn't bother.

P.S. You suck at life if these are borderline.

[emon87]

1. Is this actually dangerous? If so I complain. If not I don't

2. What is she supposed to do here? No complaint, but I might switch lines

3. If he had said something like, "wow I hate it when people can't understand English" I don't care at all. But those words are way over the line.

4. This is not a big deal at all, assuming they didn't taste the beers.

[tuq]

Kot,

I think life is too short to wig out about any of the ones you put forth. However, I'm always amazed by hourly employees like the security guard who go home at the same time no matter what actually wigging out about something like that. It's not like she was keeping him from doing something else.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Is this actually dangerous?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's smoking three feet away from a hose full of flammable liquid, which hooks up to an underground tank with thousands of gallons of it. I would say that's fairly dangerous, even with the hose and tank containing everything.

[TheDudeAbides]

1. Definitely complain. wtf kind of retard does that?

2. This one is kind of meh. There's a level of expectation when dealing with people working minimum wage jobs.

3. This is a huge one. I would go right to the supervisor without question. And I don't think I'm being nitty. This is unacceptable behaviour.

4. Meh.

[Quicksilvre]

I would say one and three are definite complaining situations, and two is definitely not a complaining situation. I don't think four is a complaining situation either, especially given that it's a busy bar and the Guinness was going to move soon anyway.

[emon87]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1. Is this actually dangerous?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's smoking three feet away from a hose full of flammable liquid, which hooks up to an underground tank with thousands of gallons of it. I would say that's fairly dangerous, even with the hose and tank containing everything.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that's the thing... can you actually ignite the gas even if you tried? I'm almost positive it wouldn't shoot up the hose and into the tank.

I mean, I guess it's not the smartest thing to do just in case. But it seems like it's really not a big deal.

[kidcolin]

3. I mostly laughed because he threw dyke in the mix. In reality, I've always just been passive when confronted with this sort of racism. I used to hear it all the time at an old job of mine (factory across from the projects). I'd always just keep my mouth shut. The only way I'd say anything to this guy is if he addressed me. i.e., "Can you believe this chink?" "Ya dude, what a dyke."

[Alobar]

Those would all have me saying something if I was in charge of those people or something, but as just an innocent bystander, im just ignoring it, cuz its not worth the drama.

All except number 3 however tho. The other 3 are just people doing [censored] work at their jobs, thsi guy however is just a [censored] person and Id have let him know personally how ignorant I thought he was, then I would have demanded to speak to his supervisor, then depending on how that went I may or may not have written a letter to TSA with the guys name and what happened. I realize the writing a letter is a bit extreme, but if I felt like the supervisor or whoever didnt give a [censored], then im doing it cuz I cant [censored] stand racists and it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to get the Ahole [censored] canned.