OH, HAI, HOW’S IT GOING?

I hope you missed me, because I missed you.

I know I’ve missed a lot of excellent writing, videos, and podcasts (not to mention news), so please don’t take this content-light issue as indicative of anything but me trying to protect my sanity and energy by not overdoing it my first week back.

Last week, I covered beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk’s endorsement of Spencer Pratt in Beehiiv’s Tyler Denk Reminds Us That Tech is Just Assholes All the Way Down, and earlier this week, Bad Job Bingo returned with its first all reader-submitted, all Seriously Maybe Don’t issue.

Saw a few folks playing Bad Job Bingo out in the wild (although I don’t think they’d call it that): first, Christina (pocketdressobsessed) shared this tiktok rightly yelling about the abysmal salary for a Content Creator at Sinclair Media.

Then, Charlsie Niemiec pointed out the hypocrisy inherent in saying you believe in pay transparency and then not being transparent about the pay range.

I love this trend of humans giving companies with shitty jobs the what-for. Vive la révolution!

We seem to be continuing the theme from last week:

ADPList CEO Felix Lee posted¹ an awful meme using the F slur, because nothing says professional, successful CEO of a <checks notes> tech mentorship organization like going out of your way to generate an image using company logos to spell out a homophobic slur during Pride month and then posting an apology that’s very obviously written by AI. In Erika Flower's words: apology not accepted.

Also, Elon Musk, the evil dipshit who used X/Twitter² to incite a pogrom in Northern Ireland just days ago, is now a trillionaire.

May I just say: Fuck that guy.

Back in May, TradeCore’s Igor Jovic announced that his team had replaced Zendesk within 48 hours after the company broke their customers’ ticket portals and then moved them, without warning, to a plan that would have cost them almost four times as much as their previous plan.

When you make using your product or renewing a contract so painful that even a loyal customer of 10 years who was actually willing to give you a little more money rage-quits, that's basically the end of the line. I don't know what's going on over at Zendesk that they're not cluing in to this, but...you know that gif from Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts has gone back to the shop that refused to serve her?

That's what plays in my head when I think of Zendesk. Just Julia saying "big mistake, HUGE" over and over and over.³

Meanwhile, 404 Media reported that hackers were able to access Instagram accounts of high-profile figures like former President Barack Obama by simply asking Meta’s AI support agents to hand them over.

Just noting the irony of this, given that Meta debuted the AI support feature in a blog post called "Boosting Your Support and Safety on Meta’s Apps With AI." Maybe they meant that other definition of boosting?

There were so many people announcing new jobs, promotions, certifications, etc. that I had to stop asking for permission to spotlight them and save them for next week. I remain cautiously hopeful?

Great work y’all, and congrats! You’re killing it.

So I’ve been seriously coveting Molly White’s shortform reading list for ages now. Well, this week, I was finally able to build my own version: Footnotes, named such because you know how I make love to my footnotes.

It’s not limited to reading; I add stuff I’m watching and listening to, along with notes and commentary. It’ll preview what goes into the newsletter and probably include stuff beyond it, too.

I’ve been working on ways to reward folks for becoming a Support(ing) Human, so Footnotes is exclusive to paying subscribers. It’s not much, but it’s hopefully the first of a few perks to come, so stay tuned.

Latesha Byrd is writing a series on the High-Performance Tax. Really looking forward to this series -- folks in CX roles tend to pay the performance tax at a much higher rate, and over a much longer period, than other roles in Tech do (simply by virtue of where we end up in the org chart).

Bee Gagliardi wrote about how self-service isn’t the absence of service. This article is a banger -- I'd love to quote the whole thing, but I can't, so instead I'll just say how much I love that Bee pointed out that if you're not moving a solution closer to the customer's intent, you're not building self-service, but unpaid labor. Preach!

Authority Magazine spoke with Sarah Caminiti about building lasting customer relationships.

Musubi’s Fil Jankovic wrote about how his team tried to detect bots across 500 comments and instead found a much more nuanced problem.

Permission Slip talked to Deb Haas about how everything is made up and the points don’t matter (okay, I added the points bit). A quick, lovely, and refreshing interview with Deb Haas of the Joy Prompt Club and AI Confidential.

Sarah Betts wrote about the Worksheet Problem. Sarah articulates something I've often felt myself — that doing work for the sake of doing work for those of us who need a purpose and a direction kills our drive to succeed (and just compounds the burnout we're already feeling).

Building Legendary Leaders talked to Neil Smith about how to build a healthy culture on your Support team through structured hiring.

Marginal Support talked to Sal Cervantes about what building processes in Support Ops and creating a cool structure with Legos have in common. I love Andre's podcast because he highlights little-talked-about topics in CX. But I love it even more for the diverse range of guests he interviews, which means we get to learn and grow with folks we might not hear from on other podcasts. I wish it many more episodes of insightful interviews.

Big Boss Biscuits talked to Taylor Coleman about what to do when you’ve finally made it in your career, only to find it’s not a place you want to be.

Happy to Help talked to Andrew Rios about how Support teams can provide their value across the company.

CX After Hours talked to Cati Brunell-Brutman about how CX is a goldmine of data.

The Safe Space podcast talked to Alice Hunsberger about the need for checks and balances. Alice cares so much about people, and she has so much to teach us. She's one of the few people whose work I boost whenever I see it!

CX Forum East
June 16-17 at NY Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC, NY. Hosted by Forrester. Register here.

Terrorism and Social Media Conference 2026
June 16-18 at Swansea University, UK. Hosted by Cyber Threats Research Centre. Get tickets here.

Where to Start with AI Support in 2026
June 17 at 12pm ET. Webinar hosted by Help Scout. Alison Groves and Abigail Phillips. Register here.

Customer Success Summit Seattle
June 17-18 at Grand Hyatt Seattle, Seattle, WA. Hosted by Customer Success Collective. Get tickets here.

Customer Success Festival London
June 18 at 8am BST at Convene Sancroft, St. Paul's in London, UK. Hosted by Customer Success Collective. Get tickets here.

Customer Contact Week Las Vegas
June 22-25 at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas, NV. Hosted by Customer Management Practice. Register here.

All Things In Moderation 2026
June 24-26 at 3:30pm Australian EST. Hosted by Australian Community Managers. Register here.

Chief Customer Officer Summit Austin
June 25 at 8am CT at Austin Marriott South, Austin, TX. Hosted by Customer Success Collective. Get tickets here.

CX Forum West
June 29-30 at Hyatt Regency San Francisco, in San Francisco, CA. Hosted by Forrester. Register here.