Having worked in retail for more than half my career—yes, shocking as it may seem, Yours Truly is no stranger to a name tag and a colored vest—I am familiar with people who like to play the 'customer is always right' card. We all know the type. Entitled. Arrogant. Infuriating.
The same is true for the recruiting industry.
Rightly or wrongly, I like to believe I'm exceedingly polite in a professional setting. Do I have a robust internal dialogue that bends heavily ‘not polite’? Absolutely. But you wouldn’t know that on the outset.
And yet.
There are times….There are times I need to tap into something, shall we say, not quite ‘polite.’
Example? Why, yes please.
I had a less-than-pleasant interaction with one of those entitled types and ended up pulling out my inner Karen when the affronted employee went off on me during a performance counseling. The entire conversation could be an entire blog post, but I'm going to focus on a particular phrase this woman dropped on me during our call. The below conversation will start about half a minute after the woman called in and I picked up. Please keep in mind: it was the last call of my Friday afternoon...
Me: The supervisor also wanted to note that you were wearing fake eyelashes--
AE (affronted employee): What supervisor? I have never worn fake eyelashes while working!
Me: Well, you showed up yesterday with them on, and that is against dress code. However, there is a note--
AE: Was it the supervisor at XX school? He wants me fired.
Me: As I was saying, there is a note here from the supervisor today at your new school that you did not have them on when you came to work today, so no issues as of today--
AE: Why he gotta bring that up? I wasn't even supposed to be there yesterday, so why he sayin' something about it?
Me: Well, you were supposed to be there yesterday, so when you showed up with them on, I assume he thought you were planning on working with them on, which is against dress code.
The AE exploded at this point, screeching about how she's never worked with fake eyelashes, and that she was told when she showed up that she wasn't needed at that school that day. The rant continued from eyelashes to working at multiple schools to the impossibility of being on time for a 9am shift when her kid gets on the bus at 8:47am and she told us that, so why we holding her accountable for an impossible schedule?
Partway into the monologue, the sound changed sufficiently to where I decided she had pulled the phone away from her face and was instead yelling at it from a distance.
I was over it.
It was the last call of my day. I wasn't obligated to let some lady unload her grievances on me (most of which were unfounded), so I pulled out my inner Karen.
Me: Janelle (name has been changed to protect the embarrassed), you need to stop and listen.
AE: (continues ranting on the other end)
Me: I said! Stop! And! Listen!
AE: (silence for a few seconds) Oh, I didn't think you were still on the line.
Me: Where else did you think I would be? Because if you were hoping I was going to hang up, that answer is no. This conversation is happening. Right now.
AE: (wanted to continue to rant) I just don't know why he'd say that--
Me: Stop. And. Listen. Are you listening? Good. There is information I need to tell you.
[Insert rest of conversation here that isn’t particularly relevant. She was a very subdued 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am' by the time I was done, though, and will probably be filing a complaint about how mean I was.]
Let’s go back to the initial point of this post: "I didn't think you were still on the line."
The simple fact she even said that means, to me, this is a tactic she's used before. Several times. Namely: 'If I rage long enough and don't give them a second to get a word in edgewise, they'll hang up, and we won't need to have the conversation.' That's where my head immediately went when she told me that.
Unfortunately for her, I've handled years of bitching and moaning on the other end of the phone. There are days where, yes, I will hang up on someone. Usually that person has started using derogatory words and is beyond rational thinking. It isn’t too much of a stretch to go from that kind of a phone call to the raging (former) employee being blocked from any future position. There are also the days where I put myself on mute and go about my work while the affronted employee rants and raves until he/she runs out of steam. At that point, I will unmute myself and ask them if they're done so we can continue the conversation we were having before they went off the rails.
That usually catches them entirely off-guard. <smirk>
Sun Tzu’s Art of War treatise has a variety of things to say about the value of a surprise attack. This has been used many times in many different ways over the millennia, with sufficient success to perpetuate its continued use.
So too, can the concept be employed during verbal combat.
My Affronted (former) Employee gave up her best surprise tactic – the “rage until the other end of the line hangs up” method—and I didn’t flinch. Ha.
Just call me...umm...If I knew a name of an awesome military commander with tactical ability like no other, I'd insert it here. Since I don't, though, let's all assume we googled something and got the reference.
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