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Customer Service Sins

• Apathy - "I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I wasn't listening."
• Brush-off - "This/that is not my department."
• Coldness - Moody, depressed, hostile, unfriendly attitude that says,
  "Please go away."
• Condescension - "This is very complicated and tough for someone nontechnical to understand. Don't worry about it."
• Robot-ism - "Thank-you-have-a-very-nice-day-NEXT!"
• Rule Book - "We can't do that."
• Runaround - "You'll have to call so-and-so. We don't handle that here."
• The Black Hole - Requests for information or expedited service go in but never come out.
  
• The Bounce Back - rejecting requests on procedural grounds, such as returning purchase orders for missing numbers instead of calling.
• The Edict - "Effective immediately, we will no longer ______ unless _____________."
• The Gotcha - Taking pleasure in catching other departments erring.
• No-ism - A "No, you can't" attitude instead of a "can-do."
• The Papermill - No telephone/face-to-face conversations, everything on a form.
• Turf-ism - Guarding one's own area of responsibility to the detriment of overall productivity (sub-optimization).