Stupid vs. Bitchy

Over the past few months, I’ve assisted a co-worker with one of her daily duties on days when she’s got back-to-back meetings and conference calls. This task requires me to call various locations of one of our customers and ask for information that didn’t transmit to our system. Sometimes, the managers at the customer locations are on the ball and knowledgeable. They know exactly what information I need and where to find it. Other times, the manager on duty has no clue or is very disorganized -- you can hear them on the phone rustling through a week’s worth of papers trying to find the information I need.

As I chat with these people, I find the ones who are a bit disorganized or clueless but are very nice are the ones I don’t mind walking through the process of reprinting the report or waiting for them to locate the information. The rude ones who make it seem like locating the information will take hours off their life really make me wonder how they became a manager in a customer service-oriented business in the first place.

Of course, when I chat with these people, even when I don’t feel like it, I have to be cheery and professional. My manager is a master at this, by the way. And I usually try to answer the phone professionally as well. William is always amazed when I answer the phone in my “work voice” as opposed to my “real life voice”.

Many mornings, I overhear one of the other ladies in my office calling our internal branches for information they didn’t send or sent incorrectly. This person works on the other side of the office for a different manager. Anyway, I get along fine with this lady, but I can understand why the “outside world” thinks she’s a bitch. Her phone manners really suck. One of her jobs is to call and get information or get site managers to correct information and re-send reports. Kind of like a bill collector, but for reports. Her tone of voice and the way she speaks to the people at the branches is so rude and often accusatory. Instead of saying, “I haven’t gotten your report yet today. Can you fax it over when you get a chance?” she says, “You didn’t send your report. I need it right now!”

I can imagine having to remind people to do something day in and day out can probably get pretty annoying and wear you down. But it’s your job. And maybe if you were a little nicer to the people you talk to,you’d get better results. On the other hand, I also wonder why certain reports haven’t been automated, eliminating the need for someone to manually collate the data in the first place!

My point of all this chatter? I was wondering if I’d rather give the impression of being stupid or a bitch -- especially when talking to a stranger, specifically someone who has never met me in person. I think I would rather seem like an idiot (but extremely NICE) than be known as a bitch. People would say, “That Jal... she doesn’t know much but she’s so nice!” Isn’t that better than, “What a flippin’ bitch!!!”?