Nina from Customer Service

“Hello, this is Nina from Ryder Share. How can I help you today?”

“You can tell me why my stupid account isn’t working and you’d better make fast it, Nina.” She could hear the sneer in the man’s voice as he over pronounced the two syllables of her name. Was it a sexist thing or just a jerk thing? God, it was just her first call today. 

“Sure, happy to help your car sharing experience go more smoothly. May I ask who I’m speaking with so I can take a look at your account?”

“I just told the god damned machine who I am so why the hell do I need to say it again? Or was that just to waste my time so you could ask me again?”

“Sir, I know it is frustrating to have technical difficulties, but please let’s keep the tone of this call friendly. I need you to confirm your identity for privacy reasons before we move forward, but yes I do have a profile in front of me.”

He confirmed his name for her (she affectionately nicknamed him John the Jerk to herself), grumbling through the process of securely confirming his identity like she was doing him a favor. Then came the part where he actually had to explain the trouble he was having. He didn’t know how to open the car door and, as was typical, he was pissed that he had to call for help for something so basic.

“I did what the app said and waved my credit card in front of the sensor and it didn’t do anything. Are you going to send me an actual technician so he can help me with this issue?” Nina reminded herself it was funny that he was trying to be so blatantly sexist to rile her up, but she wasn’t finding this amusing lately. Still, she was going to take him down a notch which was mildly satisfying. 

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary, John (the Jerk). I believe we can resolve your issue with one question- do you have the member card we sent you available?”

“My what?”

“Your member card with the Ryder Share logo? It’s green with an old fashioned looking key in black in front of-“ He cut her off, of course.

“No, why would I need that? Doesn’t that just have my account number on it?” Nina smirked. 

She imagined speaking to him in the same condescending voice he had used with her, somehow making her own name sound like a put down. Sounds like you didn’t read the basic instructions, John. They were a paragraph long with cute graphics and said to keep this with you, John. You mentioned your credit card for some odd reason like every third caller, John. People didn’t like it when we didn’t send them something familiar and tangible, and begged for a key card that no one bothers to keep. She said none of that.

“I see the source of the problem,” Nina allowed herself a small smile, “Ryder Share clients use the member card to swipe on the car’s sensor to let the car know who is there, so to speak.” She paused, John started softly under his breath. “But not to worry, John, there’s a technical fix that I can help you with right now.” She couldn’t help pausing here for emphasis.

“Yes, and that would be?” He was actually gritting his teeth now.

“You simply open the Ryder Share app on your phone, you do have that downloaded?” She got a grunt in the affirmative here. Nina smiled wide because people can hear you smile on the phone, and laid on her thickest customer service voice. “Wonderful! Now, just go to the account screen, tap the “virtual member card” and when it brings up the QR code, hold your phone up to the sensor. Please go ahead and try this, and let me know how it goes.”

She heard a rustling as he angrily punched at his phone, and did she what she said.

“It worked.” John sounded mildly surprised but still really annoyed, which annoyed her.

“Great! I’m happy I could help you sort that out. Anything else I can help you with today?” 

They finished the call with the scripted good bye she was required to use and hardly a thank you from John. Nina’s brief feeling of triumph was already gone. She looked at the doodles and customer comment tally she had in her notebook. They ranged from positive “thanks so much for fixing that quickly, I was so stressed about getting stranded” to negative disgusting garden variety insults. And of course the insults always outweighs the kind comments. She used to worry about what this meant for her job security, but she’d outlasted most of the people in her orientation group and was seen as an average to above average representative in her department. What did that really say about people- that they’re just rude when they have a bit of power or was it like faceless trolls on the internet? 

Nina glumly went to get a bagel from the break room. A group had gathered in the, frankly, sad beige little room. The room buzzed with conversation and she had no idea why. She leaned against a plastic counter near her cubicle neighbor Maddy and asked why everyone seemed so excited. 

“Brian made a huge announcement a few minutes ago, he seemed surprised, too. They’re going to let our office test out the beta version of the new video customer service chat service! There hasn’t even been an email, but since one of our engineers came up with the idea they’re letting us be the ones to “break it” and find the bugs.” Clearly happy that she got to pass on brand new gossip, Maddy took a huge bite of bagel and turned to listen to the group debating over if this was good or bad. 

“Are people going to just be rude to us to our faces now or maybe they’ll actually treat us like, you know, humans?” This came from a guy named Jorge that was a row over from Nina and Maddy.

“Don’t be silly, they’ll see your face and just hang up!” Jorge’s best friend Ron got a good chuckle for this pathetic joke. People really were excited if they were laughing at his “zingers.” Jorge laughed, but then sobered a bit.

“Actually, that’s a good point. What if we have an increase in racist comments from customers? I’m sure sexists will be worse, too.” 

The room went quiet as this new possible future seemed a lot less excited and a lot more soul crushing. In a store customers were polite more often than not when surrounded by people adhering to social norms of shopping, but video chats might give shameless online trolls the chance to scream at you.

Nine asked, “I hope they’ll actually listen to our feedback when we test this out. What if we could rate our interactions with customers?” The group seemed interested in this, but doubtful, and everyone slowly went back to their desks. 

The next few days were filled with a series of mind numbingly dull training sessions on how they were going to ethically try out the new app on customers. Ethics and fairness were emphasized because “ethics” was in the company mission statement, and fairness because employees had voiced their serious concerns about angry customers. Shockingly Ryder Share decided to take this seriously and went with something similar to Nina’s “rate the customers” idea.

Brian, the head of Nina’s department, tended to lean heavily on business jargon but at least tried to explain this succinctly, “We’re just trying out this new technology for a short time, but as a company Ryder Share is always concerned with employee satisfaction. We appreciate your energy and buy in during training this week, and want to keep this a positive work environment. Therefore, we are also trying out a rating system. You can give one to five stars per interaction with customers, and we encourage you to tell customers if their language is inappropriate. In business appropriate language, of course. If anyone experiences any egregious examples of sexism, racism, or the like, you are at liberty to label it as such for the customer. You can even suspend the account of the person temporarily until a manager can review the situation, as we will continue to record all customers help calls.” There was a literal gasp at “labeling language and stunned silence at “suspend account”.

“Just to make sure I’m understanding this right- we get to rate customers and if they treat us like dirt we can take away their service?” Nina wasn’t sure who had asked this question, but appreciated their candor.

It seems Brian didn’t know either and and frowned a little.

“That’s correct. The video customer chats will give us a better chance to connect to customers while also protecting your workplace experience.”

Nina walked away from the meeting in shock. She could punish someone for treating her like dirt? They were taking the customer’s anonymity with video chats plus allowing employees to speak up for themselves? 

She ran through all the possibilities and couldn't stop glancing at the many, many pages of insult tallies at her desk as she worked. The many times Nina had to bite her tongue and let people walk all over her sprang to mind, the dejection she felt having another human being tell her that she was bad at her job stung every time.

The new program was rolled out on Monday and everyone in the office was noticeably more put together. They did a cheesy group picture for the staff website and then everyone settled down at their desks. She could hear Maddy’s bubbly voice and smiled as she put her headset on. 

“Hello, this is Nina from Ryder Share. How can I help you today?”

After a moment a 30 something year old man with dark brown hair and green eyes, wearing business professional clothes appeared on her screen looking startled.

“Yeah, hi. Didn’t realize this was a video chat. My account or the sensor on the car isn’t working or something, can somebody fix it?” That would be me, sir, Nina thought, but she kept her smile plastered on her face with effort.

“Yes, I’m happy to help your car sharing experience go more smoothly. May I ask who I’m speaking with so I can take a look at your account?”

He visibly took a deep breath before answering, “I just typed all of that in from the app before speaking to you, what was the point if you don’t have it already?”

“We are just testing out our new video chat customer service line, but we still need to confirm your identity for security reasons. Thank you for your patience while we stream line this system!”

He fixed her with a stare that seemed to suggest her answer had been garbage, but gave her the information she needed. His name was John, which didn’t help her growing disappoint with her first video call.

“Anyway, I swiped my card over the sensor and it didn't work.”

“Did you swipe your member card with the Ryder Share logo on it?”

“My member card? No, I don’t remember getting a card. Besides who the hell gives out member cards now anyway? God, am I not going to be able to use the car now?” He worriedly ran his hand through his hair and Nina heard another voice on the video.

“You probably received it in the mail a while ago, however-“

“Can I use the car or not, Nina?” She heard her own name spat back at her and it was accompanied, for the first time at work, with a glare.

“Yes, as I was about to say-“ there was a voice from the background again and John interrupted her again.

“Just spit it out, I don’t have all morning. Some of us actually have lives and work hard. We can’t all read from a script like some bimbo.” 

Nina could feel her blood boil, while also thinking in the back of her mind that he wasted more time interrupting her and insulting her. She glanced at the new policy pegged to her wall with “sexist comments” under the suspend-able offenses, and set her jaw.

“That was not-“

She stopped speaking when she saw a small child with curly hair wearing a uniform move in front of the phone and ask John if they could drive to school yet. She heard John murmur something and then saw him glance back at the phone, but the child, a little girl also watched Nina. Her mouth went dry. She cleared her throat and heard herself speak.

“Sir, I know it is frustrating to have technical difficulties, but please let’s keep the tone of this call friendly. You simply open the Ryder Share app on your phone, go to the account screen, tap the “virtual member card” and when it brings up the QR code, hold your phone up to the sensor. Anything else I can help you with today?”