Tolerance for all lifestyles and beliefs, unless we don’t like them. That’s what we are supposed to do right?
There’s a lot of talk here about the theoretical ethics of call center employees, but I dunno, she sounds like the kind of person I would be friends with.
I can tolerate someone who holds different opinions than I do on a wide range of subjects. Live and let live, right?
I cannot tolerate someone who announces, “I want to be join a band of paramilitary thugs and beat you and everyone you love to death.” And that’s what “Nazi” means.
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wow, such a hypocrisy! You mind people wondering why is a boy named April (even though you are a girl) and then you go on and accuse someone of being a nazi just because of his gamertag!
It seems to me that April is not “Professional as Fuck” in any way, shape, or form. It doesn’t excuse the guy’s dirtbag, racist, handle but that handle doesn’t excuse Aprils complete lack of professionalism. By April’s admission, the guy was not abusive in any way. He called in expecting customer service, which April is (under)paid to provide. That is not what he got. Instead, according to April’s account, she simply hung up on him with no explanation.
Fire April and suspend the guy’s account (if it really existed). If the account didn’t exist and was a prank? That doesn’t matter. Seriously, it doesn’t. If April had looked up the account and it didn’t exist? A conversation would be warranted on the appropriateness of how to deal with such a thing. However, April hung up, having no clue if that was a real customer or not.
“In my confusion, I may have inquired at the top of my lungs as to what the fuck was wrong with them. I may have inquired about this several times. I was escorted out of the building and am very proud of myself for not pulling the fire alarm on the way out like I wanted to.”
Yeah, this is not a person who is acting in a professional manner. This doesn’t excuse the Neo-Nazi douchebag, but both people in this story can be condemned for different reasons.
“My manager said no, there was no such process as Microsoft keeps a strict firewall between the customer service department and the Xbox policy enforcement team.”
So, dealing with the troubling handle wasn’t April’s job, dealing with the customer was. End of story.
Now, this certainly looks like a long condemnation of April with not much said about the Neo Nazi on the other end of the line but, seriously, I think everyone (other than the Neo Nazi’s themselves) agrees that Neo Nazis are useless fucks undeserving of sharing the air we breathe…there isn’t a whole lot of confusion there.
You find the idea that someone doing customer service should behave professionally even towards people they find odious so outrageous that you believe that the only reason a person would suggest it is that they are intentionally trying to rile you up?
The world is full of more opinions than you seem to be aware of. Not everyone who disagrees with you does so to make you angry. I mean, this whole discussion starts from the knowledge that there are people on Earth who think it is right to kill others because of their religion or skin colour - surely if we acknowledge that there are people crazy enough to be Nazi’s we can at least imagine that there are also people crazy enough to think that professional customer service is valuable.
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You’re right, I don’t know why she was fired. I know why she says she was, and I know Stream is not commenting.
I just don’t personally believe, having known people who work at Stream, that she was fired SIMPLY for hanging up on a neo-nazi.
So I used to work in a call center for a big third-party billing processor and as we all know, most of their accounts are porn. I had to fix accounts for porn and that meant I watched a lot of pron. Most of it was pretty typical, some of it was weird, but I’ve been online since the BBS days and I spent a lot of time on IRC so basically I’ve seen it all. I wasn’t phased.
Except once. I only hung up once … it was a goatse-like-porn-site and technically I should have probably forwarded it to someone to make sure it was allowed. But I was already having a bad day and in no mood to look at that shit any longer, so I closed the browser and hung up the phone.
Thankfully, the phone system was shitty and calls got dropped ALL THE TIME. And they didn’t really give a shit, anyway, heh.
That was a weird job.
Did you think this through at all? Why would a large company such as Microsoft make the risk of calling someone and use RACIST LANGUAGE as a way to test them?
No.
A major company is going to use RACIST LANGUAGE to “test” an employee? Really? Seriously? Did you think this through?
Everything I saw in her story was completely professional.
Using racial slurs is abusive. Nobody should have to put up with an abusive caller using racial, sexual, or homophobic slurs (whether they belong to the group being slurred or not), and they should be allowed to hang up without being called unprofessional. This is not even denying them service, since they can always call back and get a different person, or even the same person, and, if they’re no longer abusive they can then be served. Now in this case, the person’s username is a racial slur, so every use that includes his username will be abusive, but… well, sucks to be him. That’s what you get for choosing a bigoted username. (Which isn’t even allowed by the terms of service, so you’ve got somebody who’s admittedly in violation of the terms of service demanding the benefits of it.) So far he’s the only one who’s operating in the wrong.
Sure, she swore after the fact, but… I believe once she’s been fired for hanging up on a neo-nazi, her obligation to be professional ends- she’s no longer employed by them, and she’s not a customer of them, so she’s free to speak her mind any way she wants. In this case, swearing might be impolite, but questioning what was wrong with them is absolutely appropriate.
The difference is HATE SPEECH.
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I’m afraid I feel a bit differently. First, let me say that, in my experience, anyone who claims to be “professional as fuck” generally isn’t. But let’s move that aside for a moment.
If you behave in a professional manner, you don’t stop being a professional when you depart. Why? Because in most industries your behavior upon leaving a job is pretty important to your next employer. Going off about her employer in this fashion, while certainly cleansing, is highly unprofessional. So, right off the bat, this person starts off by claiming to be professional while showing otherwise.
Now then, let’s get to the tag itself. Reporting it is certainly outside of April’s scope. It is not her job, Microsoft doesn’t want it to be her job. Indeed, the name may have been reported weeks prior (which would explain the disappearance without resorting to silly conspiracy theories).
I agree that Nazi Doucheboy Dave is in the wrong. That still doesn’t mean that April is in the right. Simply hanging up on someone is unprofessional. There is no way to couch it as otherwise. This wasn’t a belligerent caller that April tried to calm down, this was a calm (and pleasant, by April’s admission) person who was not harassing her in any way. She was, however, offended by his handle. So, she hung up on him.
Now, I think any number of folks who have worked in a call center will admit to having hung up on someone before. You betcha, it happens. However, most folks don’t try to pretend that is professional behavior. A professional acts like an adult, bites back the bile in their mouth, and does their job. THAT is what being professional is.
April chose not to go that route and then threw a temper tantrum (during which she pats herself on the back for not committing a crime by yanking the fire alarm).
Yeah, that isn’t professional.
Maybe April was already having a bad day. I mean, I can’t judge Amy herself on this sole interaction, but I can judge the interaction itself. Highly unprofessional.
Nazis are still assholes.
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And this was her big mistake. The fact is, she was/is going for the big story. She’s going for impact against Stream and Microsoft. She’s wanting to punish them for firing her for hanging up on a Nazi.
But we have to look at what happened:
The Nazi is gone because, as you said, someone else reported the tag.
April is unemployed because Microsoft fired her.
Everyone knows that if she is insubordinate in the future, that she will throw a temper tantrum and put up a blog post, and possibly worse.
Would you hire someone who does that? Would you risk your company on an employee who was fired , and then admitted publicly that she would endanger others by pulling a fire alarm? Or would you go with the safe bet college kid who didn’t have anything abrasive show up on a google search?
Nazis are still assholes.
You must have worked at Stream in a VERY alternate reality. The one I worked at in the late 90’s was not very well-ran, fairly high-pressure, and generally full of tech support people who thought they were pretty hot shit. Although, admittedly, people did shoot each other with toy guns occasionally and fuck around quite a lot - often even while on a call (see the aforementioned “thought they were pretty hot shit”) - but I don’t know that I would consider that a good thing.
As soon as I read that this person worked at Stream it didn’t in the least surprise me that they flipped out. Considering that many calls ended with a one-sided, usually-but-not-always-muttered obscenity-laden tirade directed at the phone …it is inevitable that some folks break down and don’t bother waiting for the end of the call.
PS: I obviously don’t think it’s the least bit acceptable or amusing that the caller might have been a racist dick, but you need to be a professional about dealing with it.
Exactly. People share quite a bit of information these days. They don’t stop to think how it will be perceived, nor the future impact. This wasn’t professional behavior and, sadly, it will likely have a much more negative impact on April than she would’ve expected, and certainly greater than might be warranted.
Here’s the thing, I’m an Orthodox Jew, I “look and dress” the part and I’m not ashamed of this and dont care what the fashionable antitheists or modernishe frei yidden have to say about my religion or what folks like “HeebHunterSS” have to say about my people.
The very system of individual liberty which protects me protects the ignorant and hateful too. With all the other things in the world, I’m not going to worry about this. He (assuming it is a he, fair assumption in online gaming) is within the scope of his liberty to pick a foolish name like that, to make comments which one would expect from such a username and even to publish books about these ideas. Go right ahead with words, its nothing to me or mine (we’ve faced worse) till words become actions.
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