I work on campus for a part of DoIT and this causes me to interact with other students and with professors. On campus the power dynamic is generally that professors are in a higher position and are to be respected always. When I am on the clock and assisting a user with an issue, I am providing a service to a user and about half of the time it is for a professor. So, when I go out to help with their ticket it can go one of two ways. They either see me as a student who is there to “help” and behave very rudely as if I do not know what my own job entails, with them trying to tell me how to perform a certain task for my job when it is the primary thing we do. Or they respect that I am a working member of DoIT as I am providing a service to them, and they trust that I will resolve the issue.
In our office there is 9 student workers, we handle the small ticket stuff so the full timers can handle the more sensitive issues. Us students typically respond to requests and are the ones to go out on them. When we receive requests for help, we get them in the form of tickets. On the tickets you can see the name of requestor, when it came in, who last responded to it, and a brief title made by user. There are 2 individuals on campus who if we see their name on a ticket, we just know the ticket is going to be awful for us. One, does not let you do work in peace, they must always be over your shoulder and trying to backseat how to do your job. Even telling us that we are doing our job wrong because we are doing it our way which is how we were taught. While the other, basically yells at us to prioritize their issue over everyone else on campus and when we do get the availability to go out and help them, they just treat any of us students as if we are purposefully creating issues for them and we are trying to sabotage their department. Other individuals are like this, but these two we see often while others we may hear from once every few semesters. The power dynamic implies that professors and staff are the authoritative figures, but when I am providing a service to them as a DoIT employee, that dynamic is slightly threatened. Because I am providing a service, I am expected to be the bigger person, and not let my true emotions show. The emotional labor of this job can be taxing, and there is even sometimes a feeling of impostor syndrome. Us student workers are constantly underestimated simply because we are students, even though this is our job.
Unruly Bodies 
All of that is unfortunately true. Sometimes, the work of the students is underestimated even if they are highly skilled, but they will never receive the same honor and respect as people above them with more experience like professors. I think people should be mindful of the people providing service to them because that doesn’t grant them any right to be disrespectful towards them. Their attitudes towards the person providing service can lead to emotional labor eventually affecting their mental health which is an unhealthy cycle. But would you say their attitude changes once you fix their issue?
This kind of interaction between someone receiving and someone providing a service can be very daunting for the person doing the work. People often forget that the workers in these jobs have feelings, and they just expect their needs to be taken care of as quickly and seamlessly as possible. I imagine this to be even worse when the person providing the service would traditionally be seen as a lower status, such as a teacher and a student or an older person and a younger person. This adds an element of the person receiving the service thinking that the other person doesn’t know what they’re doing.
It is always nice to learn about someone else’s perspective. I see DoIT student workers come and fix issues for professors on the spot and they are always courteous but I didn’t know how you might have felt about the service. As we learned in class Karl Marx stated “Organized labor is what separates humans from animals.”. The DoIT students probably have lot of training and experience to work in these environments so they should get treated with respect as they treat others with respect. Treating anyone any less than humane is rude and cruel. People should be courteous of others’ time and energy. Not only does this job have productive labor (working outside the home, seen as “real” work), but you also deal with an emotional labor side (work of managing emotions and expressions to create a certain experience for others as part of one’s job requirements). You have to separate the body and emotional mind to create a positive environment for your customers/clients/professors even if they are rude because you will be the one to get in trouble for it.
Any kind of job that entails providing a service to customers also comes along with emotional labor because it involves communicating “professionally” with them. Unfortunately, there will always be people who feel more entitled than people who provide services or them. From my experience, customers defend themselves with the reasoning that they are the ones paying so the service provider must listen to them. In your situation though, I don’t believe the professors are paying for the DoIT services so that is quite interesting as to why they are being so rude when they are the ones asking for free labor. I guess power dynamics have more of an effect for students who have on campus jobs.
Customer service jobs are so draining. I want to throw “the customer is always right” out the window because it’s bullcrap. Some people are just so rude and so entitled. Workers shouldn’t have to deal with any of the nastiness. All customer service tend to be entry level, lower paying jobs so the pay often doesn’t match the amount of emotional distress the job is putting you through.