Can We Charge Them A Bigotry Premium?

I am a customer service rep at an insurance agency. Part of my job is working with customers and the claims department when there is a claim. I’ve seen a lot of customers upset with their claim representative, rightly or wrongly, but this takes the cake.

Customer: “I don’t want to work with that lady (the claim rep) anymore. She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

Me: “All right, I’ll see if I can get your claim reassigned. Was there anything specific she did that was a problem?”

Customer: “Yes! She came on the line as if she knows everything about her job, but I can hear that she’s black! I know they’ve only been hiring blacks for these jobs for twenty years! I’m black myself; I know!”

Usually, I won’t try to get a new claim representative assigned if the rep didn’t actually do anything wrong, but I made an exception in this case. The poor representative didn’t deserve to deal with that. I still can’t get over her thinking that African Americans have only been hired for insurance jobs since the year 2000!