Sometimes at work, I'm southern.
It happened on accident at first. I had
helped a Texan find a Morgan Freeman movie and she spent enough time
talking to me at the circulation desk that I subconsciously
internalized her speech patterns. This has happened to me before. I
once listened to the Harry Potter series on cassette tape and I spent
a week talking like I was from Northamptonshire. But at that time I
didn't work in customer service so the only real victims were the
members of my family. I guess it's true that you always hurt the ones
you love.
Anyway. After the Texan left, I took
the next person in line and they owed $65.20 in overdue fines. I told
her how much she owed but because of the Texan when I spoke it came
out sixty-fahv and I noticed
that instead of getting mad, which this lady had been about to do,
her face softened and she smiled. “Oh, of course. Hey, where are
you from?”
I
don't think well on my feet (or my butt, as the case was) and I said
“Mesa” before I could consider the atypical nature of my fahv.
She looked puzzled so I blurted out that my father is from Texas.
This is mostly true, but I could just as truthfully say that my
father is from Westminster, California or Chicago because he grew up
all over the place.
“Oh,
I just love your accent,” the lady told me, and she handed me her
Visa card. I was so nonplussed by her change of demeanor that I
didn't swipe her card fast enough the first time and I had to try
again.
One of
the only advantages to working with the taxpaying public is that
there are myriad opportunities to perform sociological experiments.
This is probably an ethical gray area but I decided last year that as
long as I don't attempt to perform any statistical analyses or
publish in the journal of the American Psychiatric Association, I'm
in the clear. So after the Texas incident, I decided that when I
interacted with customers I was going to speak with an accent.
There
were objections. Not by any supervisors, because I never tell them
when I'm collecting data, but from coworkers who are used to me
talking like a character on an American sitcom. Three customers in on
a Saturday morning, Brittany said, “Jill, that's creepy and you
need to stop.” I made note of her objections in the Excel file I
use to track the results of experiments I perform on coworkers and
switched from East Texas to West Louisiana. After lunch I segued into
rural Virginia.
I
can't speak to the validity of my research methods but after seven
days I seemed to get a better response from customers as a Dallas
native. I also noticed that the accent was working on me; I provided
better customer service when I spoke with a drawl. I tabled the
accent as a full-time experiment but drop fahvs
at least twice a shift and when I need to de-escalate a dispute with
an unhappy customer.
At a
county-wide staff training session last month we were asked for ideas
on how to handle an angry patron and apparently I am the only person
in the Maricopa County Library District who feels that “Pretend to
be Southern” is an acceptable means of calming someone down.
The
only problem with the accent is that it increased incidences of being
addressed as “Sweetie” by about 320%.* I don't know if it's the hair or the cleavage but about
one in three male customers will be unable to stop himself from
calling me by a cutesy nickname, usually “Hon.” But I get
“Sweetie” from both genders equally (approximately one in five
customers) and when I am Southern, it's Sweetie This and Sweetie That
and all of a sudden my smile doesn't quite reach my eyes and I will
shank a B.
I
realize that I've got epic hair and I'm probably showing too much
supraclavicular soft tissue but I am a professional, dammit, and I
would like to be treated with a little respect. Sweetie always feels
demeaning and last year, around the same time I started using
caffeine as a substitute for sleep, I had had enough.
The
first thing I tried was to stop being nice to people at the desk.
This was both convenient and acceptable because the thing about
working for the government is that people expect you to treat them
poorly. I was never rude but I was deliberately unhelpful for
probably a solid week. I was your stereotypical stern librarian,
which I hypothesized would result in more respect. Unfortunately I
grossly underestimated the number of men who have librarian fetishes.
The week culminated in someone's great-grandfather asking, “Do you
want me to pay the fine, or do you want to spank me?”
Although
on the upside, that same week I intimidated a little Mexican guy into
calling me “Sir.” But it takes a lot of effort to be a jerk
consistently and I didn't have the energy for it. I asked the
internet what I could do to command more respect from the taxpayers
of Maricopa County. Most of those things involved effort, too, and
the other thing about working for the government is that people
expect you to be lazy. I don't want to disappoint them, which is why
I spend most of my working hours watching cat videos on YouTube and
playing really juvenile pranks on my coworkers.
The
laziest thing I could think to do was just to start calling people
Sweetie back, and I have gotten away with it every single time. Not
only have I gotten away with it but people have asked for my name and
then e-mailed the branch manager telling her about that nice Jill who
provided exemplary service.
The
downside is that it's hard to break the Sweetie habit. A month after
I started offering reciprocal Sweeties, my supervisor asked if I
would shelve a cart of DVDs and I said, “Sure thing, Sweetie.”
She didn't react, but when I called in sick the next day she did
suggest that maybe I take the next day off too, because she was
worried about me.
I
compared her worry to the data from the rest of my experiment and I
have decided that, in the interest of workplace harmony, the next
time I call my supervisor Sweetie I need to do it with a southern
accent.
*I got a B in
research methods in college. I earned a C but fought my way up to a B
using arguing skills I picked up in the logic class I took that
semester.
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