On Being Greeted with Nonverbal Vocalizations by a Likely Very Unhappy Customer Service Representative

When I called the Walgreens to make sure my photo prints were ready, the person answering the phone made some sort of noise, but did not form any discernible words. I wasn’t sure what was going on — did they intend to say something but experience a catch in their throat so the words just didn’t come out? Were they so busy and frazzled that they needed a moment to collect themselves? I could hear background noises the whole time, so it wasn’t that the signal was cutting out. I paused and said “Uh, hello?” and the store employee made another nonverbal sound, this time a little louder. So … I went ahead and explained that I hadn’t received the promised email or text notifying me that my photo prints were ready, but it had been a few days, and I wanted to know if they were there. The person on the other end of the line said they would check, and a moment later confirmed the prints were there.

The employee I spoke with was indeed capable of normal speech. Once I knew that, I was pretty shocked that, upon being prompted to give a more professional greeting than the initial wordless vocalization, that person apparently could not muster the will even to mumble a resentful “Walgreens how can I help you” — not even a sullen “What,” in fact.

For a moment, I wondered whatever happened to the American spirit of hard work, professionalism, excellence, success? Then I remembered: it fed into the rise of soulless mega-corporations which now rule the lives of the masses with a velveted iron fist. People like that Walgreens employee are trapped in an economic system that provides a glut of crappy jobs with no future and very few other options for those not lucky enough to have the social advantages, talents, interests, or dumb luck necessary to make it into a “good” career.

Just another reminder of the importance of supporting alternative models — community-based, employee-owned, cooperative, smaller-scale, and/or local enterprises (note, I didn’t say “businesses”). Will try to remember that next time I need to get photos printed (or whatever) …

(It is not my belief, by the way, that it is always advantageous for the individual to work for a smaller business than a mega-corporation — which would be absurd — it’s just that the mega-corporations have way too much power and we should be doing anything we reasonably can to redistribute resources away from them, if you ask me.)