As a majority female company, there can be alot of passive aggressiveness and lack of candor and openness due to biased gender expectations. It's not blatantly said in the handbook that women can't be assertive, but that's the undercurrent here. I'm not even addressing some of the comments I've gotten from male colleagues.
The overall expectation of women working here is that you are to be obsequious and servantile. Many of your customers can have strong biases, prejudices, or can simply be outright disrespectful, rude, and mean spirited when addressing you. And some will often then go and lie if they didn't get their way. Just plain disrespectful. You have to go through alot to have this addressed as it is consistently your word against theirs. It's quite draining to constantly have your integrity and decisions called into question over rude customers who fuss to get their way. Trust your employees.
Asserting boundaries with these types is also questioned. Some residents have a complete lack of respect for authority, rules, or anyone who does not look like them. And that's the plain truth. I've been cussed at and yelled at by (by men and women) and it's always "Well what did YOU say that made them act out?" And I find this highly abhorrent. As if they want to avoid the fact that some individuals are just abusive. Plain and simple.
The customer service industry doesn't like to address the hard issues of abusive people, or how customer biases affect employees. Sure, we write papers and dissertations on these topics in school. But dare we actually tackle some of these issues in real life! Starbucks did a great job with their company bias training but I think companies need to address the flip side of how employees are treated as well.
On a side note, it seems it takes awfully long (i.,e 5 years plus) for people to get promoted.
