Seeing as how he’s been warned for trolling my bet is he’ll keep a low profile…at least for a while
You know what I mind? Not having money.
Now granted, losing that day’s pay probabaly isn’t a big deal for **LifeOnWry’s ** kid, but the world is full of people who can’t afford to lose a day’s pay over a cold. It’s also full of employers who will fire your ass for calling in without arranging coverage.
Even in white collar, salaried jobs, it’s an issue. Everyone bitches when you come in to work sick, but the fact of the matter is that at the end of the year when they’re doing your performance review, they count up your sick days, and I’ve never once been patted on the back for keeping my germs home.
People generally prefer to stay home and relax when they’re sick. If they’re at work, it’s probably for some reason other than to annoy those around them.
Or perhaps not. Not everyone has the luxury to call in sick for a mere cold.
Earlier this year I caught a cold that threatened to make me dead and buried. I welcomed death, though I lacked the strength to actually push up daisies. It was bad.
That was on a Tuesday, and I left early. I told my office mate that I’d probably call in sick on Wednesday. She said I couldn’t as she had some sort of conference or doctor’s appointment or something that she absolutely, positively could not miss. I had to cover for her. We can be short staffed, but we cannot be unstaffed. I had little choice but to come in, as contageous as I was.
And it was hard. It took a huge amount of effort to actually show up, sick as a dog, in the cold and snow and slush. I would gladly have coughed in the face of anyone who would actually BLAME me for making the effort.
Sounds like the prick who was so obnoxious to Life On Wry’s kid has a great future ahead of him … guys like that always wind up in management, somehow.
Yep!
This job is not a life-or-death deal for her, but it’s a decent job for a kid. The pay is fair, she gets regular reviews and small (but again, regular) raises, the “perks” are nice, and because they do hire so many teenagers, they’re VERY flexible in scheduling. There aren’t that many jobs that will let you take a whole weekend off for prom, for example, or that keep the local school calendars on hand and keep track of who goes where and what events coming up might restrict availability. (For example, none of the employees who are graduating with my daughter have been scheduled for graduation day. They didn’t have to request it off, the management knows where they go to school and planned around it.)
But, because of all that, there’s a lot of kids around here who want to work there, and as Frank noted, they can find someone else to take the money. My daughter has been there for a year and a half now, and in talking to her friends, realizes that her job is a coveted one. Had she called in sick, she probably would not have gotten fired, but she would have been reprimanded and it would go on her (thus far spotless) record. If she’d covered her shift, she would have been off the hook, but she was opening and anyone who could have worked for her would not have gotten there in time anyway.
I also learned last night that when she got to work, she tried to trade off her box office position with an usher, because ushers don’t have to interact much with customers. Unfortunately, the only usher who could have switched with her was not trained yet on a register. So, I stand by my claim that she tried to do the right thing and didn’t have any other options at the time.
And the customer who was mean to her could have complained to a manager, rather than humiliating the poor kid.
Maybe, maybe not. I’m rarely sick too, and I don’t do anything different than any other people. Maybe wash my hands better; I don’t know. I think we’re just lucky, and having a superior attitude about it just pisses people off.
I’m sorry this happened, and that she’s sick, but she actually cried at work? Is this common behavior for adults?
Hey, when you are sick it doesn’t take much to set you off. You already feel like crap and just standing there at a counter can be enough to leave you feeling drained. I can see where if she was already sick and just wanted to go home that this incident might be enough to make her cry. Heck, I once cried on the subway because the train I was on stopped 3 stops early for the night and made me transfer to another train to finish going home. I was sick and I had been up since 6:30 in the morning and it was 1:00 am at that point. If you aren’t feeling well it doesn’t take much to make you cry.
Thanks for saying this. Yes, the customer was an asshole but breaking down in tears was not very professional and kind of an overreaction. Life is going to hit her a lot harder than that, she’s going to find out.
Imagine if a man started sobbing because a customer was rude to him.
I’ve worked shitty customer service jobs and dealt with my share of asshole customers, but I never burst into tears (and I was the same age for some of them as the OP’s daughter). One thing you learn is never to take it personally. Those people’s issues are their own and have nothing to do with whatever till punching drone they happen to be dealing with at the moment. The mistake is giving them any power to hurt your feelings. I ultimately ended up regarding them more with wonder and amusement than anything else. The bigger the asshole, the better the story I got to tell later.
Word of advice to the OP’s daughter. One way to drive people like that crazy (since you’re not allowed to tell them to fuck off) is to continue being passive-aggressively nice no matter what they say. Show no emotional reaction but robotic politeness. Basically become an automated phone service. “If you would like another ticket, press 1. To talk to a manager, press 2.” It drives them up the wall that they can’t get a rise, it lets them know they mean nothing to you and it gives them nothing they can actually complain about or get you in trouble for. There’s a way to do it so perfectly, that the implied middle finger is obvious but completely unprovable. The best practitioners I saw of this technique were always women.
The OP’s daughter is a whopping 18 years old, lacks the benefit of your experience, and was sick as heck besides. I think she can be forgiven for dropping her guard in the situation. Or are you just operating on the logic that there’s no bad situation that can’t be made even suckier by criticizing the victim?
There are PA’s in my job(any good one really) that have that down pat. They are a fucking brick wall if you give them shit. Always polite and professional but impenetrable. It comes with experience.
Or gay guys, like yours truly. Other than that, I agree with your advice in re asshole customers. However, I will say that in retail, it’s not uncommon for the newer people to cry at work. It’s a tough job.
Even though she’s been there a year and a half, that’s still pretty inexperienced. It took me far longer than that to develop a thick skin in retail. When I managed a theatre, I managed a few girls that were reduced to tears because of assholes, and they were some of my best employees.
Yes, she actually cried at work, and no, that is not common behavior for adults. Nor is it common behavior for this particular 18-year-old, who, while legally recognized as an adult, is still a kid in high school. She’s not prone to tears and generally has her mother’s “fuck 'em if they can’t take a joke” attitude.
She felt like shit and was trying to push through it to do her job, and got abused by someone who was being nasty for the sake of being nasty.
I dunno, if I was graduating in a couple of weeks, probably going on to college, I might have turned to my manager and said, “I quit,” before bolting out of the ticket box and confronting that ass. However, I’m a guy, and don’t have much tolerance for bald faced asshattery.
I remember the topic of crying at work being addressed at a business seminar I attended once for women. It’s viewed as a weakness to cry – but women cry for reasons that don’t have anything to do with weakness. We cry from frustration, hurt, and most significantly, anger. Men don’t and think it’s weak. Women believe this, but it’s not true. Men and women are not exactly alike, and we don’t react the same in all situations.
Sorry about your daughter, Life. I hope she’s feeling better and doesn’t hold the crying against herself!
I lurk at a message board dedicated supporting customer-service people. Some customers are ASSHOLES and when you’re not feeling well or you’ve had a bad day and someone says just the wrong thing, yeah, you can get upset enough to cry. Even people with thick skins.
Careful. She’s got germs.
Bravo. And ya know what? I really don’t mind if I get sick, not with a cold anyway. A cold is nothing. A cough is nothing. Nothing. I mean, getting sick is part of life. Not only that, I get mildly irritated when people are so sure where they get their illnesses: “My son gave me his cold”. “My co-worker gave me the flu”. “Thanks to my inconsiderate cubemate, my whole family now has the crud”. Come on. You don’t really know. And does it really matter?
Aw, I’m so so sorry for your daughter. 
On the first day of the first job I ever had (cashier), a bitch in the line made me cry by griping aloud at how slow I was going. It was my first day! I was still getting the hang of swiping the items and figuring out the register! The old woman up front tried to comfort me and told me to disregard her but it didn’t stop the tears. People don’t realize how demoralizing their comments can be. Because of experiences like that I came out as a person who is much more patient with minimum-wage kids; I was once in their shoes and I know how horrible it can be. I’m sure that your daughter will pick up similar values but it seems like she already has some good ones as a hardworker by toughing it out at work. That’s pretty rare nowadays!