Manager told customer care to escalate every ‘speak to the manager’ call — reversed it in 2 weeks after a flood of complaints

An employee working in Customer Service was reprimanded for refusing to escalate every other client call to management. Confounded, they followed the instructions, ultimately making the manager reconsider his decision. The employee, who goes by u/rugbyplayer96 on Reddit, shared the incident on April 21.

The worker admitted that a major responsibility of their role was to say 'no' to their customers. And because of the policies, most clients would insist on talking to the upper management and complaining about the worker. Every time it happened, they deliberately refused to transfer the call so the management did not have to repeat what had already been conveyed to the customers. "Whether you speak to me or the CEO, it’s going to be a no, so accept it now and move on with your day to avoid further frustration," the person explained.

Everything was going well until a new manager took on the responsibilities and demanded that he be informed when clients wished to speak to him. Initially, the employee tried to explain to the manager, but nothing worked in their favor. "He shut me down and told me that whenever someone requests a manager, I must call him and see if he’s free and if he’s not, I should email him their details and the issue and he’d call them back that day," they added. 

Disappointed, the worker decided to do exactly what their manager said. The minute a customer mentioned speaking to upper management, they called the manager and informed him. The first few times, he agreed to speak to the customers, but eventually started declining indirectly. "I could tell he was getting stressed because I could hear him on his escalation calls, and it was clear that he’d bitten off more than he could chew with dealing with these escalations," the employee recalled.

The manager was clearly struggling to deal with the customers and ultimately repeating what the worker had already told them. Finally, he reached the threshold and emailed the worker, requesting them to return to their previous way of dealing with customers. The employee noted, "...and if someone raises a complaint, he’ll back me up. He went from 'you must escalate' to 'please shield me' in the space of two weeks."

An Accountemps survey (cited on Recruiter.com) found that more than half (59%) of respondents have worked under a micromanaging boss at some point in their professional lives. In fact, respondents also confessed to experiencing the negative impact of a controlling boss. While 68% said it lowered their confidence, 55% admitted that it affected their productivity. Similarly, when the manager interfered with the employee's work, they must have also felt disrespected, but their presence of mind eventually made their manager admit his fault indirectly.

Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit post, u/kelltanis commented, "At least he realized it and said he’d back you. Too many 'leaders' have too much ego to accept that. Good job on you and good job on the boss for (eventually) accepting he was wrong." Similarly, u/mira_dfalco shared, "I love explaining to someone that I could get them to a 'supervisor,' who can go to their next level, who will send it to the account manager, who will come discuss it with me. They can overrule me, of course, but they aren't likely to; they trust that I know my stuff."

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