Banish Complaints About Customers in Business and at Work

Whether it’s the one-degree-of-separation market of SmAlbany, or how social media has, like a tesseract, made the geographic distances between us local, it never ceases to amaze me how freely and publicly professionals complain about their customers (and/or their employers) in business and at work. As my friend and mentor John noted this weekend:  your employer is your 800-pound gorilla of a customer, the source of 100% of your sales revenue.

In light of these facts, why would you:

  • Blithely complain about how annoying some of your customers are on Facebook?
  • Constantly tell your customers and your (lost) prospective customers how stupid they are in your area of subject-matter expertise on LinkedIn and Facebook, posting articles to prove how right you are and how stupid they are?  (Is it more important to be right, or to have customers / employers?)
  • Complain to a hiring authority for the first full 10 minutes of an interview about how horrible your current boss is; and then ask if the hiring manager is a good boss? Really?  I don’t know how to start to speculate where this vacuum of common sense begins or ends. Or wonder if the candidate will ever take any responsibility in any workplace.  Interview over, prospective job lost.
  • And yes:  I’m self-aware enough to realize that I’m complaining about complaining.  ;D

As my Mommy would say:

  • You get more flies (or sales) with honey (and make it authentic, please, or don’t bother) than with vinegar; and
  • If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, in business and at work.

Complaints File On Laptop Shows Complaints