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Niles: Here’s a proposal for Disneyland fans

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Working in customer service often puts employees in what seems like impossible situations. It’s your job to make customers feel good about spending their money. But it’s also your job to stop customers from breaking any of your employer’s rules, too. The mixed message? Always tell customers “yes,” except for when you need to tell them “no.”

Putting up with that for minimum wage — or something not much more than it — is why so many of us ditched customer service jobs at the first chance we had to earn a living by doing something else. These days, if you screw up, not only might you lose your job, but you could end up the target of some inescapable viral video, too.

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So I sympathize with the Disneyland Paris cast member who has been getting roasted on social media worldwide for breaking up a marriage proposal in front of that park’s Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Why would a cast member even think of doing that? Because the proposal was happening on a stage that is closed to the public. Technically, the couple appeared to be trespassing — a violation of Disney rules that could have gotten them kicked out of the park. So the cast member broke up the proposal by swiping their ring box and stepping off the stage, drawing the couple to follow.

As a former Disney theme park cast member, I stand in awe of the cast member’s ingenuity. If you wanted to get that couple off that platform as quickly as possible, I can think of no more effective thing to do than what that cast member did. No ring, no proposal.

Yet I also cringe every time I think about this incident. By the time that couple had made their way to the stage, any hope for a graceful solution had been lost. And great customer service is all about finding graceful solutions to the inevitable conflicts that arise when people want things your employer cannot or will not deliver.

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Niles: Should Disneyland shut down Magic Key for good?

That is why some of the best cast members at Disneyland seem invisible, even though they do all their work in front of the public. If people notice you “handling” a situation, especially if it has escalated to the point where people are taking out their phones are recording, you have failed to handle that situation.

The best cast members comfort children in that split second just before they wail. They step in between parties just before a conflict becomes heated. They casually direct guests who haven’t yet realized that they are hopelessly lost. They know that when a guest asks, “when is the 3:00 parade?” the guest really means, “when does the 3:00 parade get here?”

Yet each of these moments is soon forgotten, as guests instead remember the attractions they came to see, rather than the crisis a cast member averted. So forgive me for choosing to forget what happened in Paris and to instead recognize the countless employees who work so hard to make a day in their theme parks seem so effortless.

 

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