Customer service jobs tend to follow the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of your problems are raised by 20 percent of your customers. That’s certainly true in my field of IT support at a college campus, though thankfully the ratio is more like 80/10.
Sometimes the 10 percent that causes the headaches can be so overwhelming that you lose sight of the fact that the other 90 percent are perfectly nice people, and aren’t troublesome. Thank god for that! We should be grateful for that majority. Imagine if the numbers are skewed the other way: it would make the job downright intolerable.
The rule to invert your perspective and thinking of a situation can be so powerful. I’m fine with dealing with same few problem customers day after day: that’s the job, after all. So long as the work isn’t overwhelming in volume, who cares if I’m seeing the same person for the third time, troubleshooting the same issue after many weeks. Or so what if someone has two computers that need support instead of the standard one.
Instead of railing against whatever perceived unfairness, remember that they represent a small percentage of the supported population. It’s not worth the time and energy to force them onto some procrustean standard. Better to deal with them directly and idiosyncratically.
Because truly, if all customers were competent and never run into issues, there would be no need for people like me working in IT support. Therefore, at the very least, I am grateful that I can keep employment! That will quickly erases any stress or bad feelings towards any particular customer.
The school of my people.