Dilemma: Can someone force you to be rude, because he is the one who pays you?
Who pays your salary, has the right to tell you what to do. To what extent this is right? I’m writing this to ask for help to answer a dilemma I encountered a couple of days ago.
The Story:
Shaila paid $4,000 for a product that was supposed to be delivered in one month. However, because of an issue on the production side, the product has delivered to our office almost two months later than the promised date.
Finally, the product was ready to be shipped to the customer. We promised to deliver the product ourselves, but when the time came, my boss told me to ask the customer to come and pick up the product herself.
A couple of days after, when Shaila had found enough time to test the product, she emailed me to schedule a meeting to review critical malfunctions of the product together. After confirming the time with my boss, I replied back and set the meeting for 4 PM.
In the meantime, my manager set a meeting with a potential client for 4:30 PM on the same day. The time arrived and I called Shaila. Unexpectedly, she was very polite and friendly, even though we broke our promise two times. She started to talk about the difficulties she faced because of the product itself and the delay in receiving it.
The wall clock was showing 4:10 when my boss came to my desk and asked me to hang up the call, but Shaila was still talking. “Hang up the call immediately”, the boss repeated. I muted the call and told him that “she is talking, I cannot cut the call on her.”
After one minute and repeating the “Hang up the call” for uncountable times, my boss jumped into the call. “Hi Shaila, I’m sorry but we have a sales call and we need to go now”, my boss said to Shaila a couple of seconds before hanging up the call on her shocked face without waiting for her to respond.
I was feeling extremely bad. That was unacceptable in my opinion, especially considering that I was the person who was in touch with Shaila during all these times. That was rude. I was thinking to myself: “Imagin someone takes your money for a crap product and deliver it to you with one month delay, and when you are trying to explain the issues politely, he/she just simply and suddenly leave the conversation to sell another crap product to another customer.”
We finished the sales call and I left the office to home, but couldn’t be apathetic about what happened. “Just forget it. It’s not your company. It’s not your reputation. You don’t need to worry about neither Shaila nor the company. You just need to do what you are told to do because this is what puts money in your pocket” desperately trying to calm myself down.
The Question:
What would you do if you were in this situation? What’s the right choice considering all the facts? Would you just hang up the call because your boss told you to do so? Or you would find an intermediate way? What that would be?
I look forward to hear what’s the right (most professional) decision in this situation, without sacrificing the personal values?
