Hack A Day had a post on how to get better service from "service representatives".
As commenter "joey y" says, how sad is it that we need a book to tell us that being nice to people from whom we want something is a good way to get that?
I make no secret of it that people who are nice to me are likely to get faster service than those who aren't. My time is a zero-sum game: I only have so much of it to give out, and frequently my time is entirely consumed by stuff I'm *supposed* to do. I always work extra hours (much to my wife's frustration), so given that my mere presence is entirely at my discretion, I feel no guilt in rewarding the good and punishing the poor. Thankfully, most of the people I work with seem to understand that making my life miserable isn't likely to get them what they want any faster.
Anybody who is bored enough to look at my weekly roundup posts out of more than mere duty (hi boss) knows that I've always got plenty on my plate. At the risk of almost working on a Saturday afternoon, I've currently got 90 individual requests of varying complexity in my queue, ranging in scope and complexity from "can't print" to "rebuild this cluster installation including OS, batch queue, authentication/authorization, and add some new hardware too." So anybody walking into my office is automatically taking away from one of those items - some of which are a couple of years old - even before they ask me to lift a finger to do anything at all. That's ok, it's what I'm paid for, I really don't mind. Much.
Somebody who walks into my office saying "Hi, I have a problem, can you please help me?" is naturally going to get better attention than somebody who walks in saying "Here's my problem, you fix it now." I'd apologize, but I wouldn't be really sorry, and that's just human nature. There's a difference between "squeaky wheel gets the grease" and "I'm going to bother you and get under your skin in order to get what I think I need."