Things I Learned From Madison Square Garden

Today at work, I had a situation arise where I had to stop someone's test due to their having taken a "bathroom break" for over forty minutes (the cutoff time is apparently fifteen minutes gone before we stop their test; its never come up before, so I wouldn't know). The student, upon returning just as I was leaving for the day and finding out what happened, got extremely belligerent, demanding to know my name and all this other nonsense. I finally got the student to go to the office, where the student apparently went ballistic as well. Since I'm confident I did nothing wrong, I don't feel particularly stressed out about it, although I will likely have to face the student again in the future.

Another reason I'm not too stressed out about the whole incident is because of some critical lessons I learned from working at Madison Square Garden for a year as a tour guide. That job prepared me for almost anything; I had to deal with everything from extremely rude school groups to screaming Spanish (as in from Spain) people that caused members of my tour to fear for their safety to a shadowboxer who almost roundhouse kicked someone in line for tickets before security threw him out. But beyond the crazies, from helping what was probably over a thousand people during my time there, I learned a couple of non-intuitive, golden rules of customer service.

1. If you acknowledge people that are waiting in line while you help someone else, they will be infinitely more patient.

This one isn't necessarily counter-intuitive, but it's amazing how well it works. All you have to do is let people know that you're going to help them in just a bit, and they'll instantly calm down and even be nice when they get to the front of the line. It always works. I can't tell you how many times this has helped me in the proctor room.

2. If you've never had a problem with 500 people over a certain issue or rule, and then one person has a problem with it, that one person is wrong. Another way to put this: The customer is NOT always right.

People have quirks. We all have them, and that's fine. It's what makes us unique and interesting. And the mark of someone good at customer service is respecting people's special needs and accommodating them as much as possible. I know I'm good at customer service; I've always been highly complimented as a tour guide (and gotten some crazy tips), and I've gotten several personal notes from students thanking me for making their proctor room experience as pleasant as possible. I know I'm a good people person, and that in general, I get along well with people.

However, if someone does something that just stretches common sense, is offensive or in terrible judgment, or goes against a rule that I expressly stated earlier, then respect starts to go out the window. Just because you weren't able to make everything perfect for the customer doesn't mean you were at fault for not breaking the rules. When someone starts to get angry for no tangible reason or make crazy demands or excuses, they are in the wrong. No questions asked. You have to draw the line somewhere.

This is of course the rule that applies the most to what happened to me at work today. I have personally proctored hundreds of tests. I have had to take a test from a student a grand total of twice. One time was because I caught the student blatantly cheating. The second time was what happened today. To get angry and to argue over a rule that NO ONE ELSE taking a test in my presence has ever even been aware of because it was never an issue before is ludicrous. To leave for even thirty minutes in the middle of a test, in any situation, is insane. I had to draw the line, and if the student got angry because of it, so be it. It is NOT my problem that they did something unreasonable. This wasn't even a judgment call on my part; they just flat out broke a rule, and an unspoken one at that.

3. Rules are rules for a reason. If people start questioning them for arbitrary reasons, you need to explain that the rules are the rules, and that if you don't like them, then perhaps this particular experience or place is not somewhere you would enjoy. If they don't take to that, kick em out. :)

I learned this from maybe my least favorite coworker at the Garden, but he was the most experienced of all of us, and had some great words of wisdom, including this one. He likened taking tourists around the Garden to having guests enter your house. Everyone has some quirky rules in their house you wouldn't have in yours, like not going into a particular room, or taking your shoes off. They don't tend to be offensive in any way, and you accept them as a guest in their place. I've always really liked that analogy.

For example, we have a rule in the proctor room that people need to place their backpacks in a particular corner of the room. Quirky rule, but one that we uphold, is non-offensive, and one that people respect 99% of the time. Occasionally, someone will get upset about it, and I instantly get my guard up. I'm doing you a big favor, and you argue with me? Not the way to get on my good side.

One of my favorite examples of this was someone on one of my tours at the Garden getting extremely agitated that we couldn't walk onto the court while the crew was working. He finally just walked on the court, in defiance of my telling him not to do it, and I contacted security. He sprinted off the court, and security made him aware that he wasn't welcome back. Needless to say, he was quiet and sullen the rest of the tour. Sigh.

4. It's never about you.

You don't know the people that you help. For a brief moment in time, you connect with someone, help them however you can, and then say goodbye, often forever. It can be a wonderful experience, or just an ordinary one. But both you and the customer have absolutely NO reason to have any heightened emotion towards each other. Sure, there could be something like instant physical attraction (which happened on one of my tours in college to the point where the girl asked for my number on the tour...right in front of her father!) or just general excitement about the upcoming experience (which happened a lot at the Garden).

But if someone gets needlessly angry at you, and you've been doing your job, it is NOT about you. Something has happened in their lives, or they know they messed up and are insecure and trying to cover it up. This is why I almost never get stressed out because of things that people say to me while I'm trying to be a guide or a proctor or anything like that; I know, in the end, it has nothing to do with me personally. This is the same reason that I take critique well; it has nothing to do with me personally, and in fact is often designed to try to help. No sweat.


So there you go. We'll see if there's any fallout from this, but somehow, I doubt it. And if nothing else, I know I can take the student in a fight if I need to. I've only got 4 inches and about fifteen pounds on them. :)