Friday, October 14, 2011

A Lesson from the Cable Company

My cable company is pretty far down on my list of favorite businesses to call. In fact, it is probably at the bottom of the list.


However, during a conversation with a sales representative last night, I had a surprising lesson.


I was calling simply to reduce my cable channels - getting a big packet of channels just to watch Doctor Who for a few weeks of the year was silly. I never watched the vast majority of those 200 channels.


Anyways, I digress. The gentleman who answered my call, we'll call him Joe. In my ever on-going effort to get better at remembering names, I say, "Hi Joe, I'm Jennifer and I would like to change my service." We go about the business. He does the usual little sales pitch about whatever special they have going on at the end of the call. Then he says, "Thank you and have a nice day." I in turn say, "I hope you have a nice day too, Joe." I could hear the shock in his voice at what I assume was my using his name and doing so in a positive manner.


I found that a profoundly sad commentary on the state of the world. I've been the disgruntled customer, but I try my hardest to never take it out on the representative on the phone. It isn't their fault, they just are the messenger. I also try to be personable, it just seems right.


And therein lies the rub. I think what I learned in this call is how we are losing touch with recognizing the humanity, the person-hood of those we interact with on the phone, web, and other non-face-to-face ways.


Why am I writing about this on a ministry website, well, because isn't that what we're all about - incarnation? If we believe that each person is a holy creation of God, shouldn't we treat them as such? Shouldn't we at least recognize a person's individuality and honor that?


As those in ministry, should we not be doing this ourselves? Should we not be modeling this?

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