No, I can honestly say it isn’t. What does affect my self-esteem is the guilt I feel when my co-workers have to cover for my screw-ups. I’d work 12 hour days, 7 days a week (and have, when I was a hired hand on a farm) to prevent that from happening. What I will not do is extend that sort of effort to someone I dislike, regardless of what the job is. I dunno, I think we’ve just got different ways of looking at things. Your way works for you, mine for me, so lets all sing a chorus ‘Everything is Beautiful’, chug a Coke and move on out.
Scarlett: good post, wish you the best on the financial stuff. It can be a real bear sometimes.
Once again, I’m confused. But since that’s not unusual, I’m familiar with the situation.
Your self-esteem comes from within. Fine. But based on the statements above, it sounds like you let others define your self-esteem based on your work efforts. If you like folks at work, you’ll bust your butt and feel good about it. If you don’t like folks at work, you’ll do just enough to get by and feel good about it. Why inject variables (i.e., peoples’ reaction to you and yours to them) into what makes you feel good?
And because the thread is long and I’m lazy, refresh my memory – have you taken a stance on the OP’s actions? Do you think she was right in laughing at the customer?
Let me put it this way: I dislike having to take up the slack for lazy/incompetent workers (re: the Vegas thread) and so am not lazy/incompetent to my co-workers. I look at what makes me mad and try to avoid doing that to others. Is that clearer?
**
Hard to say; if the woman was in distress: absolutely not. If the woman was simply venting ire: then yes. If she’s sobbing in despair then ya gotta help her (don’t know why a simply sandwich could reduce someone to that state but hey, I’m sure it could happen). If she’s raging about what a complete moron you are, then laughter is an appropriate response. I (obviously) wasn’t there for the OP’s incident, so I can’t say what response is appropriate so I’m reserving judgement. I guess what I’m getting at here is 1) the customer is not always right and 2) approaching work and the customer-sales rep. (or whatever) relationship as anything but an interaction among human beings lends itself to creating a sterile, cold and miserable situation for everyone involved.
BTW, we can continue this in the Vegas thread if you’d like. This ones getting kind of clunky.
My fiance, Jaime, works two jobs. He works 8-4 at a department store, Gottschaulks, and then he works 5-10 at BestBuy, Tuesdays-Saturdays. The amount of pure bullshit he has to put up with is staggering.
Yet, he’s had people walked up to him and offer him jobs in management of the competition because of his people-skills. He’s been offerend raises because of his excellent Customer Service. He’s had more customers call the manager to compliment him than anybody else in the store.
I don’t know how he does it, I guess it’s like a gift. I do know that he rarely has an unhappy customer. I know this because I worked with him, and now my mother is one of his supervisors. I’ve seen it happen. Customer comes in pissed, Jaime deals with them in a diplomatic and friendly way, and they leave happy.
I doubt he’ll stay in retail forever. And he absolutely hates it. He abhors it. But somehow, he manages to do an excellent jobs.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, if Jaime can work 65 hours a week dealing with shitty customers in such a wonderfully diplomatic way, then lois should be able to handle it too.
And good things come to people who do a good job.
Louislane138, it’s hard to put all of these incidents in complete context on this post, but you get my respect for doing a rough job for low pay. Some of what you and your brethren have to put up with in the name of customer service is illegal, although I’ve never heard of someone going to jail for throwing french fries. If you’re ever a manager and hopefully you will be soon, remember your experience in the trenches and don’t become a raving maniac yourself. Seen that happen waaaaaay too many times. Make sure your employees know you’ll step in to take the heat, diffuse the situation, and slap employee wrists afterwards when it’s warranted. Treat your employees they way you know they should be treated since you’ve been there.
The amount of shit people in general have to put up with for minimum wage is truly horrendous. Won’t go through the curriculum vitale here suffice to say I’ve done my time, but IMHO and real life experience, putting up with horrendously abusive assholes when you’re making $150k a year is a lot easier than on minimum wage. Ask any stock broker on the sell side. It still sucks but you can console yourself with a long weekend in Maui.
Hey, i just got paid crap to spit in your food! Ha!
Six years of grocery stores was enough for me (actually one week was enough) to see that customers fall into these catogories:
90% average customer, polite but not evil, nor memorable
5% really cool people you wish would come in more often
5% Pol Pot’s wife/gay lover.
that last 5% makes you hate the other 95%, which is sad,
someone also alluded to customers bringing guns to k-mart and blowing employees away, that will happen once, then the k-marters will start being strapped, and soon that last 5% will become an endangered species.
and finally, to those of you who think that without the customer, there would be no retail, just remember, without retail for you to spend your money, you would be living in a cave banging a rock on your head (some of you maybe doing that now…)
I think this comment is right on target. I never worked in fast food, but did a lotta years in retail. There were always some customers who were wonderful, most were okay, but nothing special, and those few who could just ruin your whole day in seconds.
What stands out at the moment is the year I worked in a toy store through the Christmas season (absolute HELL!). There were always a few asswipes who would give ME a hard time about why the toy they were buying didn’t come with batteries, as if I had anything to do with that. I’m not Mattel or Fisher-Price, okay? Here’s their 800-number; call them and bitch at them for not including batteries. Some actually would say something like, “Well, I spent $20 on the toy, the least you could do is throw in some batteries for free.”
And what law says I have to spend my money in your establishment for crappy service? I’m supposed to be thankful that your establishment exists so I can spend my money?
Establish a 33 percent success rate on giving your customer what they ask for, then laugh at them when they throw a fit. See how long your business lasts.
Yes, you are, otherwise you just have green toliet paper and shiney rolly things.
blockbuster did that in my area, and drove all the cool video places out of business, and then hollywood video moved in (another giant chain), so my choices are Mega-giant video store #1 with crappy service, or Mega-giant video store #2 with crappy service, while the two cool family run video stores with good service and lower prices went to the graveyard. The megastores seem to be booming (or is it that the public is so stupid they want to get crapped on, that’s why they go back again and again to these horrible places) of course, they then complain that there are no choices, when they never took advantage of the better options when they were there.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many people at the grocery stores i worked in threatened to never come in again (big freakin’ lost) but were back next week bitchin’ about some new problem.
People suck, People are customers, therefore customers suck.
I believe you missed the key point, Tars. If YOUR store has crappy service, the customers can go to another store that provides a similar product but does so with better service. My not liking your place of business does not make my money valueless, I can spend it somewhere else.
What’s so crappy about Blockbuster or Hollywood Video service? Having only been to the former once and never to the latter, I wouldn’t know why they’re so bad.
And something must have been wrong with the local places. I know you thought they were cool, but something must have been, or they wouldn’t have lost so many customers. Maybe they had poor selection, or maybe they were in an inconvenient location, or maybe their prices were higher, but obviously something must have been or they wouldn’t have so many former customers leaving them for The Crappy Giant Video Chain. So what was it?
Yeah, Blockbuster can offer lower prices because they.re a major chain. The big companies can offer lower prices than the smaller, local ones. They can also afford tons of advertising. But that doesn’t mean they’re a good chain. If you’ll ask around among people who rent there, you’ll probably find that Blockbuster has a very poor reputation - there are lots of complaints about the company, such as incorrect late charges.
Just last night, this happened to me. Tell me if I was in the wrong:
I went through the drive-thru and got my food. Past experience taught me that I should check my order before I leave the parking lot. I check my order, and rather than the double cheeseburger I’d ordered, the bag contained a single. So I went back through the drive through, told them what I’d ordered and that I’d gotten something different, and handed the burger to the guy at the window. He looked at it (and I’m sure he looked at the burger itself), and, evidently thinking I’d assumed it was the wrong thing based on the wrapper, said, “We’re out of the double wrappers.” To which I responded, “That’s not a double, dude.”
He replied, “Sir, you don’t have to get rude with me, I’m not a cook,” and started to walk away. Being called “rude” when I don’t feel I was being rude really ticked me off. Thinking that the difference between a single and a double should be obvious even to a non-chef, I called after him, “Well, can you count to two?”
Yeah, it was rude of me to escalate, but dammit, the prick started it. I’m not in the wrong here, am I?
Of course you’re not wrong, but understand this one thing. Probably most of the people who want to return crap at McDonalds do judge it by the wrapper, so the guy probably finds it easier to just automatically assume that’s the case. Yeah, the guy could have been more polite, but you don’t know the situation. I mean, he could have been coming off an eight-hour shift, maybe he just got finished dealing with some bastard who was trying to rip the restaraunt off, you don’t know what’s happening here.
So let me get this straight … we should give workers the benefit of the doubt when they’re rude, because they might have had a bad day. But customers are automatically assumed to be jerks if they’re rude and their order has been screwed up twice?
