THE BROKEN SERVICE MANIFESTO
You’re not crazy. You’re not difficult. You’re being defeated — on purpose.
We’ve all been there: trapped in a phone tree, screaming “agent” into the void, repeating our story for the third time only to get disconnected. And still, companies ask if we’re satisfied.
We’re not. We’re exhausted, ignored, and lied to. And we’re done waiting.
The Core Truths
Customer service isn’t broken.
It’s working exactly as designed.
Your rage is valid.
The system was built to wear you down.​
Hold music is a strategy.
It’s about attrition, not patience.
Frontline employees aren’t the problem.
Incentives are.
Automation isn’t the enemy.
It’s being used to ghost you.
This is the suffering economy.
And we’ve accepted it too long.
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You are not a “difficult” customer.
You’re a person.
Asking to be heard. Asking for what you paid for. Asking for someone — anyone — to care.
Instead, you get:
• Dead-end hotlines
• Robotic apologies
• Surveys that go nowhere
• Agents trained to sound helpful but say nothing
This is not accidental.
It’s called sludge — a business strategy that makes service so painful you give up before it costs the company anything.
“Ostensibly the goal of customer service is to serve customers.
Often enough, its true purpose is to defeat them.”
— The Atlantic
They’re not listening. They’re stalling.
Most companies aren’t trying to serve you. They’re trying to contain you.