One time I used my retail voice on a coworker and she was like, “Don’t use your customer voice on me, I know you’re dead inside like the rest of us, it’s just frightening and weird”
The other day I asked for a table for two in my customer voice and the waitress squinted at me and I cleared my throat and said “Sorry, still in service mode” and she dropped hers and we swapped stories about our day and my boyfriend was like “You two just became two entirely different people in like .5 seconds…”
I can be bitching up a blue streak about a customer-from-hell while the store is empty, and when the phone rings swap over to my retail voice practically in mid-sentence. I even have managers and salespeople from other stores in the chain fooled into thinking I’m infinitely friendly and helpful, and my manager’s husband thinks I’m one of the most professional people in the store. One assistant manager’s daughter dubbed me Perky-Pants because she mostly dealt with me over the phone, and was shocked to the core when I dropped an F-bomb at her graduation picnic.
The acting required in the service industry is beyond the pale. My cousin freaked out when she came to see me at work because I was all smiling and nice while helping someone who was asking inane questions and who basically forced me to walk them to the product and put it in their fucking hand but I was nice as pie until I turned around to walk away and my demeanor changed back to normal and I muttered “what a fucking moron” under my breath as I got back to my cousin. She just looked at me shocked and said “no wonder you’re so exhausted when you get home.”
this is actually referred to as emotional labor in criminology, and is considered one of the hardest forms of labor
The art of bullshit is strong in the service industry
That’s why it irks me when people act like my job isn’t hard and there’s no reason to be exhausted at the end of the day. Yeah I’m at a desk, but dealing with people isn’t easy!!
And like, I do tech support, so I have to be friendly, I have to figure out what their problem is, then I have to figure out now to solve it, and then I have to explain it to them in a way that they understand, all the while assuring them that they aren’t idiots, and sometimes things happen, and it’s perfectly okay that they called in. Or I have to soothe someone that’s pissed off long enough to figure out how or if I can help them.
Hubby doesn’t understand why I prefer to work evenings, but it’s because I’m so exhausted by the time I get off work, that I’d have zero energy to do anything if I had to work and then go to school. Also why I generally need quiet when I get off.
And I’m a natural extrovert. I don’t know how introverts can do this.