The worst job I've ever had was actually in the skate industry, working for a large ecommerce retailer. My primary responsibility was to field incoming phone calls from skaters or parents who had bought their children skateboards and had an issue in some way or another. It was a pretty standard customer service position, however the company was broken into two separate entities that had essentially the same inventory. I was the sole phone operator for both of these companies, and the phones would be constantly ringing from 9am until 5pm.
Not to shit on skaters too much, but I will say being trained by an inarticulate skate rat is a difficult thing to sit through. That was my first sort of inkling of "fuck, this might suck" in regards to the job. The owner was an uptight prick who was stuck somewhere in between hardass and dumbass, but either way his head was up his butt in regards to going-ons in the industry. The staff in the office was great, and incredibly patient seeing as they had to deal with this ex-wallstreet-turned-skate-dude-asshole day in and day out.
There was a warehouse attached to the office and brick and mortar store so that inventory online could be fetched if locals saw something that they liked on the site and wanted to pick it up in store. The warehouse staff was also great, a bunch of skaters running around a too-full warehouse pulling and shipping orders 8 hours a day. They'd get burnt and be kind of abrasive sometimes, but what do you expect. It was cold as shit in there and the boss man treated them like they were a different species than the office staff. Literally like the relationship between the office and the warehouse on the show The Office, but with a lot more profanity.
Incoming calls to the company could go a few different ways. There were the ever-impatient kids who are accustomed to being instantly validated on their phones who were calling to see where their package was. There were the moms freaking out because little Jimmy's birthday is rapidly approaching and they NEED their Santa Cruz x Ninja Turtles whatever the fuck complete. There were longboard techies who seemingly just wanted to talk about specs and get across to me that they did something other than sit on the couch. And there were, as always, the customers calling to "see where the fuck my package is". Customers had a very difficult time comprehending the concept that we would give packages to a third party such as FedEX, who is then responsible for delivering the shit. If it gets stolen, that sucks. If it gets lost, call FedEx. I can't help you. This concept seemed absolutely lost on 90% of callers, and always resulted in me getting an earful. My boss, and the owner of the company, sat directly across from me in his office and we were separated by a thin sheet of glass. Micro management became a gigantic pain in the ass, and my tone and choice of words were constantly being reevaluated and checked by his squirrel-like brain.
The breaking point came around holiday time (of course). Customers are tripping because their packages are scheduled to arrive on the 26th etc., so boss sends a blanket email to guarantee delivery by Christmas day. Of course, this is complete bullshit. He simply wanted to buy himself wiggle room while knowing that I would catch the backlash for his lack of responsibility. I was so neck deep in phone calls and work at the time that I didn't have the capacity to put it all together - when I finally did, I demanded answers and was sharply cut down in front of the office staff. It was hilarious at the time, simply because the idiotic bossman lost his cool and made himself look incredibly weak in front of his very own employees (who already had a dwindling amount of respect for the man).
In that same vein, packages that were lost in transit were never looked into. I was trained to lie to customers and tell them that we are filing a claim with the shipping company, and that they should call us back in 7 days if it didn't show. Once we hung up the phone, there was no further part of the process. They truly did not give a fuck about the customer.
Anyway, come the new year I come in to the office and am promptly let go, due to this, that and the third. Some muttered explanation about how I communicated with customers etc. Not really relevant to my experience.
There was a trend of letting go people who could have been of value to the company. When I was first on boarded, a friend who worked at the company was promptly let go in what may have been the stupidest decision I've ever seen in the professional world. The friend of mine was the face of the brand, and was damn good at it too. Think of Tony the Tiger getting fired from Kellogg.
The worst part of the entire experience was that it made me hate skateboarding. I hated the attitudes of the callers, their parents, and their insane attachment to stupid material things. Screaming or crying over the phone because your Globe Fusion's or Primitive Dragonball Z shit is going to arrive a day late does not seem justifiable, but maybe that's just me. I stopped skating for the most part, as after work I would find myself trying to numb myself and not think about having to go in the next day. I would stay up far too late because if I slept, I would wake up and have to go be verbally abused for 8 hours. I actually ended up seeing a therapist for a short time as the job was absolutely affecting my state of mind.
To lighten the mood, there were a few frequent themes of the calls that probably seem absurd to people who actually skate:
- people calling because the top ply is a different color than what's shown on the site
- people calling because they didn't get an extra set of laces
- people calling because their free grip was a little wrinkled upon arrival
- people calling because their grip job was fucked up (time to learn how to grip your own shit, I guess)
- people calling to place orders over the goddamn phone because they don't have internet (mostly southerners, I'm sorry it's just how it was)
Hopefully this didn't ruffle too many feathers, I just wanted to shed light on working in skating, directly interacting with other people may or may not skate, who just want their shit that they ordered on their phone while taking a dump. I hope that this was a fun read!