The Cost of Paying Attention

I won’t lie, I can be absent-minded at times. Actually, I can be that way quite often. It’s not so much that I don’t know how to focus, but rather that I focus on certain things while I lose focus on other things. And sometimes those other things are things that should have been focused on. And sometimes there are consequences for not focusing on those things that should have been focused on.

Before you, ask, no, I have never gotten anyone killed or severely hurt. To my knowledge… shit, I don’t know, I don’t think I have, but I guess I might not have paid attention to it if I had.

I’m talking about issues that led to my own detriment, usually by embarrassment. Here’s what I mean, I’ll start by asking you, the reader, something. Have you ever gone to the bathroom in the wrong bathroom by accident? You wandered into the male bathroom as a female or the female bathroom as a male? Have you done it at least once in your life, just by sheer bad luck of not paying attention or by rushing by the sign and thinking it was the right one for you and not caring because of how bad you had to go? No judgement here. Those of you that have, just picture that time for a moment.

Now imagine that it occurred at a sporting event. And I don’t mean an event that you’re going to watch. I mean one that you’re going to compete at. You’ve done that, right?

...yeah. I’ll explain.

It was middle school, and I was playing football. I had never played organized football before and discovered that I wasn’t very good at football, but I had made the B team and was still having fun. This particular event in time took place at the football game against Grapevine Middle School. To be more precise, it took place at halftime. I had been holding ‘it’ for most of the first half of the game, and when the buzzer for the end of the half came, I rushed off as quickly as I could to the restroom. Now, this was an away game, so I was not exactly keen to the location for where stuff was at this school. I only knew where one particular bathroom was, because it was connected to the concession stand. So I rush around the back of the building, slink into the door that I know is a restroom for whatever reason, jump into a stall, and get to ‘going’, as I needed to get it out ASAP.

After the initial relief of commencing my bowel decompression, I take a second to recall my last few moments and try to think of how much time I’ll have left before the game starts back up, and it occurs to me that I don’t quite remember the bathroom the way that I had before. I start to think, wasn’t the bathroom on the other side of the building last time I was over at this field? And when I rushed into this stall that I’m crapping in, did I see any stand-up urinals? Isn’t that a bit weird, they almost always have those in this type of bathroom, don’t they? And as I’m going through this mental replay of the last few minutes, I hear the door open at the other side of the bathroom, and the following conversation begins:

“Oh my God, did you see what Jodee was wearing? She’s gained so much weight,” said one high pitched and flippant voice. My eyes grow wide.

“I know, I’m so glad. I always hated that bitch!” chimed in another. Everything clicks in my mind. I begin to panic.

They started to recall all of the shitty things they had to say about Jodee as I weigh my options. I could just walk out casually, give them the head nod. Or I could just bolt, and pray that they don’t have time to notice until I’m halfway out of the door. Or I could just lay low, and wait for them to leave, and pray that no one else comes in before I have time to leave through the same door I came in. I decide that this plan will be the best plan I have to work with, and then I hear one of the voices say, “Oh shit, Megan, look!” And then Megan says, “What?” And the first one whispers, “I think there’s some guy in that stall!” I look down, at the football cleats that I’m still wearing, which must be clearly visible to the other people in the room. And I make a quick judgement that if I try to wait them out, one of these two will likely try to get others to come and watch the stall until I come out. And that could include people that want to laugh me or that want to whoop my ass for being a pervert guy in a girls bathroom.

So I say screw it, and I very quickly wipe clean and bolt for the door. I don’t even look over at the two, who immediately let out cackling laughter and something to tell me what I already know, that I’m in the wrong place. No time to acknowledge it, I get to the door and shove it forward and feel a loud thud. As the door opens, I catch a glimpse of some old lady that was in the way of the door as it was opening up onto her backside. In my defense, I didn’t actually see her fall on her ass. It was implied, based on the amount laughter I heard as I turned the corner of the building and ran around the back side. I re-joined my team and didn’t take my helmet off the rest of the game, hoping to conceal my identity. It didn’t occur to me until later that I was one of two black kids on the team and that anyone on our team who heard this story would be able to figure this out pretty quickly. But whatever.

So look, I’m just trying to illustrate what I’m sure you already knew: you really should pay attention. It can be a hassle to, to keep all of your thoughts organized in a way that you keep the priorities straight. Sometimes you’re just too tired of thinking, and something slips your mind, I totally get it. But it’s still hard to argue that in retrospect in many situations. It’s hard to make someone understand why you forgot you left the coffee on top of the car before you drove off. People are rarely sympathetic that you came to work wearing two different socks inside two different shoes. You’re probably going to get teased by your friends if you show up wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a wedding reception in Detroit. When you drop the ball on remembering what you were doing or picking up on a crucial cue, it always comes back to the same concept: how did you not notice this? What was on your mind just now?

Which is a fair question for many of us. Many of us have so much going through our head that we let some details fly under the radar. Not even because we were doing something else, like texting something or going through some list we wrote out. Sometimes, you are so deep in thought or in a memory and you focus on it, you keep it in tunnel vision while still unconsciously moving through another part of your day. I find it’s rather easy to get wrapped up in your own head, trying to do too much at once or feeling like you don’t have enough time to get through everything that you want to.

So what am I trying to say here? That you should stop and think about the things things to avoid making mistakes? That’s a stupid thing for me to tell anyone. I’ve had some great adventures occur because I was distracted or mistaken or surprised by something. I’ve had wrong turns that became epic journeys. I’ve had projects that became colossal failures, and then amazing clarity that came from those failures. In fact, one of the things that has made me who I am today is the sheer fact that I am okay with making mistakes here and there, just to spice things up. It is a risky way to live full time, but the occasional gamble with ‘seeing how this goes’? Is it so bad to let life throw some lemons at you?

So of course, you should pay attention. But there is an inherent cost, and actual price for paying attention. And that price may vary, depending on what you are or are not paying attention to. If you’re driving, and not paying attention to the road, you might just be risking taking a wrong turn. That could mean that you’re late to something, but also that you find a new route to where you were going and you discover a bar or a new restaurant that you get to introduce your friends and family to, and it’s awesome that it happened. Not paying attention when driving could also mean that you get sideswiped by an 18 wheeler and careen into oncoming traffic, and you crash and wind up as a quadriplegic, and it’s less awesome than the restaurant would have been. Like I said, the price varies. Sometimes you really should focus.

But other times, it's really not so bad.

I was in Florida for my last semester of college. I ran track and field for my school, and we took a trip to Gainesville, where the University of Florida is located. Seeing as I had never been to the campus before, I decided to go exploring on my own for a bit. So I take a leisurely walk down one of their main streets on campus, that had all these interesting stores and restaurants. I was just trying to get a feel for the place as a whole, while checking my phone for fun stuff to do in the area, and I pass by what looks like a random book store. I can see book shelves, and there’s a display with some music and a bunch of randomness. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the store, and I decide I’ll just stop in and see what this place has.

Upon walking in, something immediately feels off about this place. For one, there is a dog just kind of wandering around the store. It’s a German Shepherd, and a pretty big one. It doesn’t bark at me or anything, but it walks right up to me and jumps up on me for a moment, which i don’t mind so much, because I love dogs, but it seemed like something you might not want in a place of business. And while the dog is jumping up on me, I glance over at the clerk behind the counter, and he’s this overweight dude in plain clothes who is sitting at the front desk, trying really hard to ignore me and what the dog is doing. So that seemed a bit weird too, but again, I’m taking in things as they come, I can get past it.

So I start looking at some of the music, and I don’t recognize a single group. It looked like I had started looking at the punk rock portion of music, because some of the band names were stuff referencing attacks, and rebellion, and darkness, and all of this rough sounding reference to the names. And I start to look at some of the track names, and it’s pretty offensive sounding song titles too. And I still can’t find any groups I know. And that’s a bit weird, because I had been into rock music for several years now, and while I didn’t know all the groups that I should, I knew a lot of them by this point. But even then, nothing seems to actually be cause for concern, and I move on to some of the books.

And this is where it got more direct. The books were all of a certain attitude as well. Most of them referred to violence and secession and rebellion and Jews and illegal immigration and anti-government and… wait, did that one talk about Jews? Upon review, I realize there are several books that, in the title, refer to the Jewish faith in a pretty offensive way. And then there’s one about immigration that actually has the racial slur, ‘spic’ right there on the cover.

So that’s not okay, I say to myself.

I look back over to the clerk, who is still focused down at his laptop in front of him, but I see him look up barely to check on me, then look back down. And I take another look around, and I realize that I may have wandered into an ‘alternative’ bookstore. And that’s about when two dudes walk in, with shaved heads, cut off t shirts, frayed jeans, nose rings, and one of them had a sizable confederate flag tattooed on his shoulder. Which, even that isn’t so surprising in the deep south. But it furthered the inference that maybe this wasn’t the best place for me to be wandering around alone without any witnesses.

So the two guys see me, and their eyes get wide, you know, like they’re shocked to see me where we are. And they look to the clerk, who meets their gaze, and gives them a shrug, as if to say, “I don’t know what he’s doing here.” And they all look back at me, and I give them the tight lipped nod, to say, “Yes, I did make a mistake. I realize it now. I should probably go.” And I start to walk for the door, unsure if I will be allowed to leave now. And one of the two dudes that came in, he doesn’t immediately move out of the way, because he seems to want to reinforce the look of, “We would actually prefer if you didn’t come back here,” and I give him the look like, “Dude, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here, I stumbled in here trying to be spontaneous and obviously didn’t notice the signs right away.” “So then he moves over, and makes this gesture with his arms like, “Well, there’s the door, you fucking idiot.” And I make a similar gesture with one arm, “I know I’m a fucking idiot, I’m really just glad to leave here without being stabbed by Jasper and Jebediah here.” We had a whole mini-conversation with gestures and sounds, without saying a thing to one another, but the important parts still got through, I think.

Anyway, with that said, I basically ran out the door and a block down the street. I don’t know if they were going to change their mind and follow me or what, and I didn’t want to chance it. So I hopped into a random restaurant, hoping it wasn’t a racist restaurant because wouldn’t that be my luck at this point, but it wasn’t, it was a Mexican restaurant that served alligator tacos. Yeah, totally a thing. So I tried them. And I’ll admit, kind of an overrated experience, it tasted like any fish tacos I’ve ever had, but I like fish tacos and so it worked out. And I relaxed and had a much better experience with the second random place that I stopped by in Gainesville.

It would turn out later that the store had a few signs outside detailing this guy’s constitutional rights to own the kind of store he wants to and can sell what he wants. And it wasn’t a huge sign or anything, but it was there in the front window. So it was definitely my bad. And it could have ended worse, obviously. Then again, having someone murdered or kidnapped from an alternative bookstore is probably bad press, and it would have probably led to bigger problems for them if I disappeared, so I might not have been in any actual danger all along.

Now, this entire little situation could have been prevented by paying a little more attention. I risked a severe ass beating, or worse. But then I wouldn’t have this story to tell, I wouldn’t have ran into the restaurant and subsequently ordered alligator tacos (it’s very possible that they weren’t actually made with alligator), and I’m sure the book store owner wouldn’t have his own account of my visit on his personal xenophobic blog. It might have worked out best for everyone. And I learned firsthand that places like this do still exist, and that these kind of ideals are much more bold in other parts of the country than they are where I live. I experienced something that I probably never would have agreed to beforehand, but that undoubtedly changed my perspective forever. That’s the price of Paying Attention. You never know what stories you don’t get to tell now.

The Offensive Linemen In Your Office

The customer is not always right. In fact, in my experience, customers are wrong until proven right.

Most of the time, the customer is the one asking questions. And they are usually right to ask questions because they don't KNOW very much about what they ask about. Of course, I'm generalizing, but stay with me here. I've worked in several different types of customer service jobs, and they all taught me the immutable truth: People that want things suck. As in they drain. They drain time, energy, resources, souls, ect. And plenty of times, it’s not their fault, not always. They don't have to be dumb people, they don't have to be organized or in large groups, they don't really even have to ask for the thing they want. But people in need of something tend to drain one thing or another from those trying to help. I'm positive I am the same every time I show up somewhere as a consumer. And it’s not going to change anytime soon.

Customer service is the art of a few different crucial skills. The art of compartmentalizing your own needs to put someone else before you. The art of listening and responding appropriately. It is the art of knowing your business well enough to be able to help and serve. But see, there's more to it than that. In many instances, customer service is the art of getting yelled at, either subtly or overtly, and standing together. Customer service is the art of knowing what to expect, because of assholes that want to ambush you to make themselves feel better. It's having the knowledge of every possible thing that can go wrong, every conceivable way that the product or service that you offer can fail because, frankly, you've dealt with them all. It’s the art of knowing what people want to hear, what they need to hear, and what they’re supposed to hear.

Based on my experience, customer service is like the offensive line of  the business world. I mean, you never hear about customer service for good reasons. No one comments on customer service like, "Oh that company was great! I called them and they sent me the exact part I wanted and I was so impressed." Or, "Oh my goodness, they sent me the wrong part. But then they made up for it and I was so happy with them, they really stepped up to the plate!" Bullshit. You comment on customer service if it sucks, and if it doesn't, you barely notice. You barely remember it even took place. It’s expected. I learned a while ago that bad news travels 4 times as fast as good news. All the time you hear about people that were screwed over that want their revenge. They want retribution, and they’ll preach on the pulpit how craptastic your thing is. Far fewer people want to preach about a good experience that they wish to share.

Thus is the similarity between the offensive line and customer service. For you football fans, I want you to think of 5 prolific quarterbacks without having to look them up anywhere. Just think of their names, real quick. Got it? Okay, now list 5 great running backs. Done. Good, now list 5 of the best left tackles you know.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Having trouble? That’s okay, list me 5 linebackers. Now list 5 pass rushers on the defensive line, any position. Now 5 all-pro offensive linemen, any position. Still tough, isn’t it? See what I mean? You don’t remember these guys despite the fact that they’re the ones in the trenches. They are the ones who get beat up on every single play. You can have an amazing offensive line and an average running back, and you will have much more success than an amazing running back with an average line to protect him. Same thing with business. If your business has an average to shitty product, but you have people there to support it and apologize for you, you will stick around a lot longer than if you have a great product but no one to support it when there are problems or questions.

If your business has enough money to have customer service, they basically have the ability to set up a human buffer zone for themselves. A human spit guard. When you have this department, what you're basically able to do is wait for someone to come and have a problem, and you call over to this guy, you say, "Hey Larry, come here for a moment. Just stand right here, right here between me and our customer here. He's gonna yell for a while and I want you to tell me what he says, but you do it because I already have his money and I don't actually give a shit. So it's your job to give a shit. So just stand here."

So Larry gets yelled at and comes back and is like, "Yeah, the customer wants a better product for less money, he wants it today or tomorrow, he wants you to deliver it on a silver platter and he would love to punch you in your face after he gets exactly what he wants." 

And then you say, "Ok, so this is what I want you to communicate to him. I already have his money, I make the product I want to make and he is welcome to purchase or not purchase that product. I make it at the pace I choose, I deliver it in the way that's best to me, and I would snap his neck if he wanted to throw down. Go ahead and tell him that, see what he says." 

Larry says all that, and the customer yells some more, and says, "The customer says screw you and he wants a refund and he's going to tell everyone not to buy your product and that you have a microscopic penis."

So you say to Larry, "Okay, Larry, are you writing all this down, tell him this. Tell him that I’m laughing at him from my office, and that I wiped my ass with the money that he gave us for our product just to do it. And that he's a slimy, inbred, worthless shit bucket who was too dumb to live without us and our product. You can paraphrase all that if you need to." 

Poor Larry would probably come back like, "I need to put in my two weeks notice. I just don't think that I can keep doing this."

And then you, being the boss, you come back at him like, "Ok, Larry, what you're going to need to do is go into the bathroom, and look yourself in the mirror, and you're going to tell yourself that you are a degenerate and you have no life and that without this job you would be on the street. And that you can't quit and you'll be here for-fuckin- ever and your life is basically ruined. And do it quickly because when you come back, I'm gonna have you say some more shit to this customer."

I work in a customer service job right now, and it’s mostly over the phone. And honestly, in spite of my complaints, I know that my job could be a lot worse than it is. I know that I'm getting by just fine for now and that I have a lot to be thankful for. The main reason I am reminded of this is because of my memories from previous jobs.

Like my former job, working at a rental car location. It doesn’t matter which one, because I’m guessing working at another rental company would be pretty similar. Understand, this newer job I currently have, it’s all on the phone. It’s a call center, with people calling from all across the country and Canada. It can be very interesting, never knowing where someone was going to call or email from. But I can always put them on hold, I can leave the desk where the phone is if I need to. On the side of renting cars, people were calling from local areas, and then coming to see me in person. This was not optimal for me. At all.

I have learned from the days I worked there, that customer service roles done in person are not for the scatterbrained, the flippant, the panickers, the eccentric, the uninformed, the nonchalant, the independent thinking, or the hungover. I wasn't all of those at any one point (to my knowledge) but I'm sure I was each of those at one point or another when I was renting and servicing cars. The office that I ran was located right down the street from my apartment at the time, near downtown Madison, WI. So it was convenient to get there and to get home afterwards. And at the same time, it was always close, it was always there as a reminder of all the shit there always seemed to be left to get done.

I took over the location as the sole agent there, but I had an experienced guy with me for the first week or two, to get the hang of what was going to occur. And for the most part, it was a smooth couple of weeks, and I was comfortable and felt confident for when it was just me, flying solo. So obviously, my first day alone at the job consisted of several events that had not occurred to us during my training, including this dude that paid by check, having to turn away customers due to credit checks, running out of cars, having to leave to gas up cars with people there waiting, stuff like that. And then there was one particular customer, whose name I have adjusted for this story: Taylor Redd.

Taylor had rented a car two days prior. She had returned the car while my training supervisor and I were working there. Basically, she or someone in her family smoked in the car. A lot. To where it smelled a lot like any other car that's been smoked in. We also found a lot of ash underneath the seat. Both I and my supervisor saw it, we both asked Taylor if anyone had been smoking in the car, and she denied it both times. Now me, I wanted to bring her out to the car and ask her, and show her what we were looking at. My supervisor just said, 'Okay, go ahead and leave.' And that was that, at least as far as what he had to do. I took pictures, we wrote up the report, and arranged to charge her the additional fees, roughly about $250. Sucks, but that's what you get, right? Case closed, yeah?

Nah.

One of the first calls I got from my first morning alone just happened to be from Capital One, and it was in regards to a customer who had been overcharged for a car rental and had her credit pushed over the limit as a result. The name rang familiar the second it was said over the phone. I tried to explain to the Capital One woman what was going on and why it was occurring and that there was nothing I could do to change the charges. She calmly responded that Ms. Redd would be in later to discuss the charges with me in person. Wonderful, I remember thinking to myself.

So that day, amid all the other shit going on, I took my lunch break at the restaurant next door and tried to uncoil. It had been a stressful enough morning, and I actually had forgotten that I should be expecting Taylor’'s arrival. But as I walked back to the office after lunch, an interesting thing happened. I passed by some of the cars parked in front of the office, and someone stepped out from between two cars and behind me for a few seconds before darting back between two other cars. He was a younger looking black dude, had a pick stuck in his hair, had baggy shorts and a blue t-shirt, and was walking really goofy and gangly. That's seriously the best way to describe his walk. It was creepy and strange, and yet the guy looked so goofy that I remember laughing about it in my head at the time.

So I open the office back up, and in comes Taylor and 3 relatives, and they line up at my front desk, in what can only be described as an assault formation. As a formality, basically pretending I didn't remember what was going on, I turned to one of Taylor's relatives and asked, politely and as aloof as possible, "What can I do for you all?"

Taylor Redd's exact response: "You can give me back the money that you mother fuckers stole off my credit card."

I mean, she laid into me in a way that I had not previously known. She went all in, then went back-to-back. It was ugly. And while Taylor was going, the lady next to her was trying as hard as possible to keep it reasonable, trying to provide actual arguments and logic for why the money should be returned. Next to her was the same goofy kid that had followed me in the parking lot, who was laughing at all of this and really must have just tagged along because he wanted to see what was going to happen. I wasn't so much worried about any of them. I was more concerned about the 4th member of the group, who was standing off behind Taylor, with a deranged look on his face, not saying anything but just standing perfectly still, arms folded, with his bulging upper body barely covered by his wife beater shirt. That was the guy I was really worried about, because I've never seen anyone who was later convicted of premeditated murder, but I saw this guy’s face. He looked like he was meditating about murder.

Anyway, my boss ended up coming by and basically giving them whatever they wanted, which meant that we had wasted everyone’s time by trying to enforce the rule that was very clearly broken. Awesome. I take the brunt of this for hours on end and it basically was all for nothing. And this is what I’m talking about. The idea of blocking shit from someone just so that when they finally get past me, the person behind me just gives up the ball, so to speak. I would have liked to think that if I held out that long repeating the policy that was dictated to me, that the person above me would at least pretend that it was for an actual cause. I posted up and blocked for as long as I did and basically the quarterback that I blocked for just panicked and threw across his body into the zone of … you know what, it’s not even like that. The QB I blocked for ran into another lineman’s ass and fumbled the ball. Or handing it to a linebacker rather than get tackled, something like that. And that customer, and all the other customers that got to witness all of that, will more than likely remember nothing more than that our location had poor blocking.

When blocking is good, you remember the running back or the receiver or the quarterback. When the blocking is bad, you remember the blocking.