> A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare
From my (thankfully limited) experience of working with customers, it's occasionally a case of "I actually mostly agree with the rule and think you're causing a scene over nothing, but saying so directly would only make you more irate".
The anecdotes given have a certain smell like they've been filtered through viewpoints distorting things in favor of the author or their family member, and that in reality there's probably a reasonable alternate side. For example I'd guess "the blankface lifeguard made up a new rule on the spot that she needs to retake the test" turns out to be something like the pool administration introducing a new ability check for under-18s, and the idea that the author's daughter "passed" but got failed by the lifeguard is more along the lines of the author thinking she deserved to pass but the lifeguard being the one actually capable of making that decision. Or the "more and more convoluted bank details" anecdote - if the *same form* is being sent back then it sounds like the author initially missed fields on it.
Definitely not to say that there aren't people and scenarios just like what the author describes, and not to say it's not a real problem. But deciding that "thousands" of my interactions must have gone the way they did because the other person wanted to make others miserable feels like it's potentially taking the easy way out to avoid self-reflection or sincere attempts to understand. Reminds me a little of 18:46-21:52 in https://youtu.be/TebCHHCw9rY?t=1126
From my (thankfully limited) experience of working with customers, it's occasionally a case of "I actually mostly agree with the rule and think you're causing a scene over nothing, but saying so directly would only make you more irate".
The anecdotes given have a certain smell like they've been filtered through viewpoints distorting things in favor of the author or their family member, and that in reality there's probably a reasonable alternate side. For example I'd guess "the blankface lifeguard made up a new rule on the spot that she needs to retake the test" turns out to be something like the pool administration introducing a new ability check for under-18s, and the idea that the author's daughter "passed" but got failed by the lifeguard is more along the lines of the author thinking she deserved to pass but the lifeguard being the one actually capable of making that decision. Or the "more and more convoluted bank details" anecdote - if the *same form* is being sent back then it sounds like the author initially missed fields on it.
Definitely not to say that there aren't people and scenarios just like what the author describes, and not to say it's not a real problem. But deciding that "thousands" of my interactions must have gone the way they did because the other person wanted to make others miserable feels like it's potentially taking the easy way out to avoid self-reflection or sincere attempts to understand. Reminds me a little of 18:46-21:52 in https://youtu.be/TebCHHCw9rY?t=1126